


When Life Gives You Lemons Make Sure to Save Them to Your Hard Drive

by Apathy, saltedpin



Series: No One Looks At Series Titles So Call Them Whatever You Like [1]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Comedy, Denial, Getting Together, M/M, Sexual Frustration, Unresolved Sexual Tension, pre-Shogun Assassination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-10-21 09:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17640257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apathy/pseuds/Apathy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltedpin/pseuds/saltedpin
Summary: He has no problem with the attention. It’s just that right now he’s receiving so damn much of it that it’s almost starting to get a little unnerving. It’s nothing he can’t deal with, of course, but the lingering stares, the whispering behind gently waving fans, and the barely audible giggling would, were he a weaker man, give him the screaming heebie-jeebies.Gintoki learns the hard way that there is a difference between good attention and bad attention.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to rabbit_habits for the beta!
> 
> Updates should be once every two weeks. Please enjoy!
> 
>  **Edit:** And a huge thank you to deargodwhatisthatthing, who drew some absolutely beautiful GinHiji fanart and gifted it to us after reading this fic: <https://archiveofourown.org/works/18814594>. Thank you so much, we both really appreciate it. Please take a look, it's gorgeous!

_Huh._

There’s nothing particularly new or exciting about people staring at him as he walks down the street. Gintoki’s more or less used to that now. He _is_ the protagonist, after all, and a remarkably handsome and dashing one at that; the attention comes with the territory. Perhaps all this gawking is merely because the good citizens of Edo have finally got with the times and recognised his all-in-one package of gallantry, modesty, and raw animal sex appeal for the societal boon it truly is, and now, at last, they’re showing him the proper level of appreciation. 

What kind of hero can’t handle the admiring glances, the awed whispers, the coy looks?

A shitty hero, that’s what.

No, he has no problem with the attention. It’s just that right now he’s receiving so damn much of it that it’s almost starting to get a little unnerving. It’s nothing he can’t deal with, of course, but the lingering stares, the whispering behind gently waving fans, and the barely audible giggling would, were he a weaker man, give him the screaming heebie-jeebies.

He raises one arm to gift his adoring fans with a lazy wave, careful not to lift it so far as to put the pit stains beneath on display. Not that they’re anything to be ashamed of – the morning is already hot and humid, and he’s just pulled an all-nighter at the pachinko parlour, working hard to earn an honest wage of Pochi so that he can feed the kids under his care. Of course he’s sweaty! And it’s not his fault that he had to eat the Pochi before the chocolate melted – it would’ve made a mess of his yukata, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of telling those two poor children that there’s no dinner tonight, because Gin-san has to pay to get his clothes dry-cleaned instead.

And if he carries upon his person the slightest whiff of _eau de shouchuu vom_ , well, pachinko binges are thirsty work.

No, there is no shame to be had in his sticky, aromatic state. It is the heady musk of a man who has worked hard to provide for those who rely on him!

And clearly it’s a hit with the ladies – _of course_ – because a gaggle of girls with short skirts and tall hair are making their tittering way towards him, all disbelieving whispers and nervous giggles. 

He lets his face fall into its sexiest, most come-hither grin.

_Ah, yes. The fruits of ten years of labour. At last._

“Where’s your friend?” one of the girls asks, eyelashes flickering. “Or are you all by yourself today?”

It takes Gintoki a moment to process what she’s said. His friend? What friend? Doesn’t she know he’s a rugged individualist, a man alone in the world, a lone flame burning in the darkness? He doesn’t have friends. Supporting characters, yes. Side-kicks, maybe. But friends....

_Unless...._

No, that’s impossible. While it’s high time that Shinpachi entered puberty, he can’t even write a letter to a girl without enlisting the help of literally everyone he’s ever met. Is it possible Shinpachi could have snagged the attention a hottie like the one in front of him? Gintoki finds that supremely unlikely, but stranger things have happened. He can’t think of any at this exact second, but surely, somewhere, something less likely than Shinpachi deciding to stop saving himself for his hand and actually getting a girlfriend has happened.

He blinks away the proud tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Kids grow up so fast – especially these days, what with all the porn and whatnot. Hell, it was only last week that Shinpachi had angrily waved a well-loved copy of _Etsuko Does Edo_ in his face and yelled something at him about not leaving filth lying around on the coffee table where any innocent could find it. Or something to that effect – he tends to tune Shinpachi out when he gets like that, which, honestly, is most of the time. At least eighty per cent of what he says is pretty much interchangeable, anyway: boring stuff about _responsibility_ and _worst idea I’ve ever heard_ and _basic personal hygiene_.

In any case, apparently Shinpachi has gone from shrieking cherry boy to studly man-about-town within the space of seven days, and Gintoki can’t help but feel that he’s played a not-insignificant part in all this. Sure, Shinpachi has technically had the better part of a decade to get his shit together, which makes all of this really depressing if he thinks about it too hard... but Gintoki is pretty darn good at not thinking hard about anything, and so he simply lets the thought fall into one of the various potholes that litter his mind.

In its place is a new, astonishingly high-quality and risk-free thought: what better way to show Shinpachi that he recognises his newfound manhood than by being his wingman? A few flattering words about the benefits of dating an overly anxious, holier-than-thou, Otsuu-obsessed otaku – whatever those benefits may be, he’ll think of something – and these lovely young ladies won’t be able to resist.

One of said lovely young ladies raises an eyebrow at him, bringing him out of his reverie, and he responds with a grin that falls _just_ short of a leer. Probably.

Oh, yeah. He’s got this. He’s so got this.

_Shinpachi, you’d better thank Gin-san for this. Preferably in legal tender. Or at least a forgery that’s not so half-assed that it can’t pass muster with a bored teenager behind a convenience store counter._

“My friend? Yeah, nah, he’s off lifting weights at the gym. Not that he needs to lift – he’s already ripped from all that time he spends at the doujou. You should see him with his shirt off – built like a brick shithouse, that guy. Great with a sword, too. Never happier than when he’s got some wood in his hands.”

Oh crap, he’s rambling. When did he lose his touch? Probably when he started hanging out with Hasegawa – that guy’s like a black hole where charisma goes to die.

_Gotta get back on course._

“Not that I’ve spent too much time looking at him! Even if I wanted to – which I don’t – I wouldn’t be able to, because he’s always running off to rescue someone or do some good deed. If I was in a spot of trouble, I know he’s the one I’d want to sweep me up into his manly arms and carry me to safety.”

Sweat runs down the back of his neck; a twitch begins to build around his eye. Time to wrap this up with the _pièce de résistance_.

“Great guy! Really... great.”

The girls are staring at him – in wonder, surely. If they’re giggling even more than before, then it’s merely because he’s fanned the flames of their inexplicable infatuation with Shinpachi.

He’s patting himself on the back for a job well done, when their ringleader speaks up again. There’s a calculating look in her eye that he doesn’t like, although he can’t for the life of him work out why.

“So, you’re saying you think he’s hot?”

Sheesh. The things he does for these people. Still, what else is a wingman for?

He laughs maybe a little too loudly. “Oh, yeah, he’s hot as fuck! Definitely recommended, ten out of ten. But you’d better get your skates on if you want to snag him, because somebody’s gonna snap him up any day now. In fact, I think you’d better go right now.”

The girls giggle again, whispering to each other behind their hands before they sidle off into the morning, and Gintoki, watching them go, can only congratulate himself on doing his good deed for the day. If Shinpachi isn’t walking around with an extra spring in his step sometime in the next week, he’ll only have himself to blame. 

It is with that thought in mind that Gintoki, yawning mightily and lazily scratching his back, begins ambling once more in the direction of home. It’s early enough that Otose should still be closing up, which is good, since he’s pretty sure he lost his keys around the time the manager of pachinko parlour number three had kicked him out for – softly, gently, with love – putting his boot into the machine. 

Ahh, and there she is, just as Gintoki had predicted. Otose is looking more than a little raddled in the unkind morning sunlight as she sees off the last of her customers – some broken-down old salaryman who looks like he might have been crying – but after the night/early morning he’s had, Gintoki doesn’t think he’s ever been happier to see anyone else in his life. 

That is, until she fixes him with a gimlet stare, exhales a long, thin stream of cigarette smoke, and says, “Come to cough up what you owe me in rent, then?”

It seems all his illusions are destined to be shot down before they can even take wing this morning. The idea that Otose might be pleased to see him for his own sake was clearly an impossible dream. No, it’s always got to be _where’s the rent_ this and _don’t make me send Tama after you_ that. Like he’s not a hard-working single father (ish) to two growing children! Where’s the humanity? Where’s the understanding? Where’s the logic in asking a shouchuu-scented guy stumbling home at ass o’clock in the morning for anything even slightly helpful?

Still, this is a dance he knows well. He could do it in his sleep... which is fortunate, because his current relationship with full consciousness is tenuous at best.

He lets his eyes widen; his mouth drops open just _so_ in a flawless depiction of surprise, before he snaps it shut again. “Oh, Otose-san! My apologies, I didn’t recognise you for a moment – I thought some goddess had descended to earth in order to grace us with her presence. My, how radiant you’re looking this morning! Have you done something different with your hair? A different conditioner, perhaps? You look ten years younger! Not that it makes much difference when you’re ancient to begin with, but ten years is ten years, and that’s nothing to be sneezed at.” 

... It’s not working. His patented charm is having no effect. Otose is clearly unmoved. She looks like she’s ready to slam him face-first into the wall and then raid his pockets while he’s unconscious, which, sure, is no different than usual... but normally she’d do it with love. He gets the very distinct feeling that there’s going to be no love for Gin-san today. 

“Oh, look who it is,” sneers a voice that he really doesn’t want to hear at the best of times – and great, Catherine has come to join them in this dumpster fire.

His day has now gone from baffling to awkward to downright shitty. It should be illegal for a day to be so shitty before it’s even begun. He hasn’t even slept yet, so technically it’s still yesterday. Maybe he’s asleep in an alley somewhere right now, and this is all a really annoying dream. Maybe he’ll wake up if he punches himself in the dick hard enough.

“Eh? You want me to punch you in the dick?”

Catherine eyes his crotch speculatively as she cracks her knuckles, and he takes a quick step back, hands drifting southwards on reflex. “Nah, nah, I’m good.”

“Did you hear that?” Catherine turns towards Otose, who just closes her eyes and shakes her head sadly. “Mr Moneybags here won’t even let me punch him in the dick in order to make good on his debts, but he won’t pay it in regular cash either, even though he’s rolling in it. Is that how it is? Too good for us now, are you, eh, Mr Fat Cat?”

“Now, now, Catherine,” Otose breaks in, taking a drag on her cigarette. “There’s no need to be like that. I’m not about to go chasing after petty debts when I’m sure we’ll all soon be taken care of in the manner we deserve, after so many years.” Her eyes open to glittering slits, resting on Gintoki’s face. “Isn’t that right, Gin-chan?”

Gintoki has absolutely no idea what has gotten into the citizens of Kabukichou today – he only knows how desperately he does not want to deal with it. The only thing he wants to do – the only thing he was _trying_ to do – is slither upstairs to his futon and sleep for about a hundred years.

But at least Otose’s words, baffling as they are, seem to have taken Catherine’s mind off punching his dick, and right now he’ll take his blessings where he can find them. 

“Oh? Will he?” Catherine’s eyes light up – in a way that Gintoki is not sure is really all that reassuring. “So we’ll be out of this dump soon and off to live in style in Moneybags Mansion? Is that it?”

Gintoki still has no idea what she’s talking about, but he hasn’t got through this many years of life without knowing an opening to escape when he sees one. 

“Ahh-ha-ha-ha,” he says, hoping his laughter doesn’t sound as forced and tortured to them as it does to him. “See, now you’ve gone and spoiled the surprise! I was just heading upstairs to look at these fancy real estate brochures I’ve just picked up from my broker.” He gestures to his pockets, which are in fact stuffed full of empty Pochi boxes, but there’s no way Catherine or Otose could know that, even if he sometimes gets the feeling Otose’s all-knowing gaze can penetrate to his very soul. “In fact, he needs a firm offer on one of them today at the latest, so I better get upstairs and get, uh, perusing my options.”

Well, that ought to get them off his back for the moment, at least. This’ll all blow over in a couple of days, and they’ll forget all about whatever it is they think is going on – and if they don’t, well, they should be used to broken promises from him by now. If they aren’t, it’s entirely their own faults. It’s unseemly for women of their age to still be labouring under the illusion that life is fair or people can be trusted. Looking at it that way, he’s actually doing them a favour. 

He’s doling out a king’s ransom in good deeds today, he thinks as he finally makes his way upstairs: helping Shinpachi level up, assisting Otose and Catherine to understand that this life is nothing but a vale of tears and they’d better get used to it – and it’s not even seven o’clock yet. 

He slides open the door and stumbles inside, collapsing gratefully onto the sofa and closing his eyes. The morning has been an absolute write-off, and there’s nothing for it but to hit reset on the whole damn day by putting his feet up and having a snooze. A strawberry milk, too – his blood sugar is awfully low, he can feel it – but the fridge is all the way over _there_. Is Shinpachi around? Maybe he could be convinced to get the milk for him in exchange for some of his imaginary riches, given that everyone seems to be convinced that he’s hit the jackpot for some reason.

It’s still completely baffling, the way everyone’s acting – if he’s so wealthy, then why is he living like this, marinating in his own sweat and having to pester a teenaged boy into fetching his milk? If he were rich, he’d just get a beautiful woman to get stuff for him. Hell, he might even pay her for the privilege with actual money, although he’s sure that plenty of women would fall all over themselves to do it for free. The only reason they’re not already doing so is simply because they don’t know that he’s currently, ah, between relationships. If the female population of Kabukichou knew that such a fine catch was ready and waiting for them, he’d be swarmed with more women than he’d know what to do with; and then Shinpachi would never stop bitching about the mess, and Kagura would break them physically and/or emotionally, and Otae would throw a fit about what a bad influence he’s being on Shinpachi, and Catherine would probably start banging on the downstairs ceiling with a broom and screaming at them to shut up at the pertinent moment, and it’d all be more hassle than it’s worth.

No, best for him to keep his availability on the down-low for now. The price of being a single parent – he has to make the responsible choice, even if it means he never again knows love’s sweet caress. The sacrifices he makes for those kids!

Speaking of....

“Shinpachi!”

Nothing. He raises his voice and tries again.

“Oi! Shinpachi!”

Still nothing – but there’s a _presence_ looming above him, the darkness behind his eyelids just a little darker where it’s blocking out the sun. 

He cracks open an eyelid, and the presence coalesces into an ominous form: a pair of glasses wearing an irritated-looking otaku, who is in turn wearing an apron and headscarf, matsui stick in hand.

Well, at least he knows that the space behind the sink is clean. Finally, something’s going right today.

Even so, the look on Shinpachi’s face is probably at about an eight on the crankiness scale – not quite outright murderous, but definitely at the top end of the ‘peeved, and in the mood to harp on about it loudly and incessantly’ range. Gintoki’s too tired to ignore a lecture right now, he really is, and for a moment he finds himself contemplating the fiendish choice he’s been given:

1) Ask Shinpachi for the milk, and do his best to tune out the sermon on laziness and diabetes and unpaid child labour that will inevitably result; or

2) Get up off the sofa and fetch the milk himself, with a possible detour to give the kiss of life to Shinpachi after he passes out from the shock of it all.

Each option results in strawberry milk; each option involves a cruel and inhumane price to be paid on his own part. Gintoki opens his mouth, takes another look at the expression on Shinpachi’s face, closes it again, and then gets up to get his own damn strawberry milk. He takes a long, cold swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and turns to Shinpachi. 

“Why the hell do you have a face like a slapped arse, then?”

At his words, Shinpachi seems to deflate somewhat, lowering his head until his eyes are obscured by shadow. Something that feels suspiciously like guilt worms its way into the edges of Gintoki’s consciousness – though why he should feel guilty when he’s just spent all morning talking up Shinpachi’s physique and general excellence to a group of girls who are obviously out of his league is beyond him. He’s just about to ask Shinpachi why he’s hanging around here cleaning when he could be out having the time of his life (or, more likely, passing out in a pool of his own nosebleed) when Shinpachi mutters something under his breath that Gintoki doesn’t quite catch.

“What? What was that?”

Shinpachi’s shoulders tremble slightly. He clutches at his matsui stick, his knuckles turning white. “I said, I think the least you could do is give me an advance on my salary this month.” He pauses. “Which I’ve never actually been paid to begin with, so perhaps I should say, ‘Can you please pay me my salary this month?’”

It’s all Gintoki can do not to slap himself on the forehead and scream. _What is with everyone today?!_

“How many times do we have to go through this, Shinpachi? I don’t have time to teach you basic economics. However, because I’m a generous soul, I’ll give you the first lesson for free: ‘Gin-san has no money’ equals ‘Pattsuan has no money’. Anything more advanced than that is going to cost you.”

The look Shinpachi is giving him is hard to pin down. It’s his usual put-upon, over-dramatic drama queenery, but with the same hard edge that Otose graced him with earlier. It slowly dawns upon him that it’s the look of someone who has just realised that they may actually have a chance of _getting_ the money they’re always nagging about – someone who is no longer content to just go through the motions, but who may actually pursue their goal.

As if to prove his point, Shinpachi – instead of sighing and rolling his eyes or going off on some tangential rant – merely narrows his gaze into something that looks almost mutinous.

“It’d be the least you could do.”

_What the hell does that mean?! The least I could do is send your sorry ass to your sister’s place and make you eat her chargrilled eggs for a month, you ingrate!_

Shinpachi is still yammering on – ‘had nothing to eat but rice for the past two days’ _this_ and ‘must be richer than Bill Gates by now’ _that_ – but Gintoki doesn’t really pick up the thread of the conversation again until he hears the words ‘spent the last of what little money I had on your _filth_ ’, at which point he suddenly becomes interested.

“Filth, you say?” he murmurs, and that seems to be enough to get Shinpachi to stop mid-harangue, or at least to slow down enough to become aware that there’s another person in the room. 

_Hang on a minute –_ my _filth? Has he been raiding my porn stash? Or maybe he just bought Gin-san some dirty magazines as an early birthday present?_

Hmm. Whatever the case may be, someone here has to be the responsible adult, and it obviously isn’t going to be Shinpachi. The boy’s got a porn habit, for crying out loud!

“Shinpachi,” he says in his calmest, most mature voice. “I certainly hope that you have not been buying filth.”

 _Not when you can get it for free online, anyway. Shinpachi should know how to download that stuff. There has to be_ some _sort of payoff for being a giant nerd, otherwise what’s the point?_

“Gin-san!!” Shinpachi throws down his matsui stick in what appears to be deep despair. “You know that if I’d had any choice in the matter, I wouldn’t have!”

With that, he turns and flees the apartment, his apron strings fluttering behind him. Something that sounds suspiciously like a sob floats back on the breeze.

Gintoki stares after him, mystified, as the matsui stick – the only evidence that now remains that Shinpachi was ever here in the first place – rolls across the floor, coming to a halt against his foot. Gintoki looks down at it, as if _it_ might have the answers for what on earth has gotten into Shinpachi now.

_Is it hormones? Is this his teen angst?_

If that’s the case, there’s literally nothing Gintoki can do about it but leave Shinpachi to figure it out in his own time, preferably alone, in his room, with the lights out, while Otae is at work, with a jumbo box of tissues close at hand. Hell, it was what Gintoki had to do when _he_ was that age, and Shinpachi doesn't even have to do it while sharing a room with Zura’s snoring and blankly staring yet somehow all-seeing eyes, and Takasugi’s... well, Takasugi’s literally everything. 

Gintoki shakes his head. “Kids these days.” He’s emphatically _not_ looking forward to Kagura going through this stage. 

And with that, he finishes his strawberry milk, lies down on the sofa with last week’s JUMP over his eyes, and goes to sleep. Maybe things will be back to normal by the time he wakes up.

 

***

 

Things are _not_ back to normal. 

People are still whispering behind their hands as he passes them in the street, but now, rather than seemingly in recognition of his ongoing heroism, their stares and mutterings have taken on a somewhat sinister aspect. Gintoki eyes them suspiciously as he tries to keep his head down and be inconspicuous, wondering which one of them is going to leap out and demand some of this entirely fictional money from him now. If he had any money, do they think he’d be slinking off to the convenience store to read the new JUMP before putting it back where he found it? No, he’d be buying it like an adult, if only because it’d mean there’d be one fewer copy available for Zenzou to get his grubby, grasping hands on. 

Whatever. Everyone except him is being weird today, and therefore it’s not particularly surprising when a white-clad arm is suddenly slung over his shoulders and a mobile phone is jammed in front of his face.

“Say cheese,” says a voice that he recognises immediately – though he wishes he didn’t – and he barely has time to react before he hears the tell-tale _click_ of the phone’s camera. Great, just friggin’ peachy – guy calls himself an elite, but he can’t even capture Gin-san’s good side. Not that he has a bad side – just his great side and his fan-fucking-tastic side – but the photo has somehow managed to come out at a terrible angle that makes him look like some sort of sweaty, deranged reprobate.

“Good morning to you, too,” he mutters as Sabu-chan proceeds to ignore him, choosing instead to tap out a barely legible email to accompany his unfortunate selfie. Gintoki reads over his shoulder as he types, because really, Sasaki lost all right to privacy the moment he stole Gin-san’s image.

_To: Nobutasu  
omg look who i met OwO... do u think hes cute irl tho? i dunnooo lol_

He stares in disbelief as Sabu-chan continues to type garbage into his phone. _Who he met?! We’ve hung out tons of times, whether I wanted to or not! He wouldn’t leave me alone! I kicked a guy off a rooftop because of him! And of course I’m cute! I’m hot as balls!_

Having his looks judged by this elite idiot leaves him feeling oddly objectified and empty inside, so he strides off down the street, leaving said idiot and his burgeoning carpal tunnel syndrome behind.

It’s a relatively painless trip to the convenience store after that. The only interruption is a quick detour to deal with Sacchan after she starts screaming at him from an alleyway about how now he’ll finally be able to buy her the castle she’s always wanted – with a genuine dungeon, of course – but really, making a minor deviation from his planned route in order to poke her in the eyes and leave her writhing on the ground in a semi-orgasmic heap is the most normal thing he’s done all day, so he’s almost grateful to her.

Finally – _finally_ – the convenience store appears before him like an oasis in the desert. Even if it’s a mirage, he doesn’t care, so long as it’s a mirage where no one asks him ludicrous questions about his alleged millionaire status.

The doors open like the gates of heaven, and a celestial choir greets him with a tinny rendition of the company jingle. The store pulls him into its comforting, overly air-conditioned embrace, and he relaxes into it. He’s finally safe, here in the bosom of the Oedo Mart.

 _Nobody cares who you are in a convenience store. The clerk only cares about whether I’m going to steal anything, and I’m not going to steal anything except the entire contents of this week’s JUMP. So long as my hands and my pockets are empty when I leave, he’ll let me be. That is the way of the convenience store clerk._

Glory of glories, there’s even a JUMP right there on the shelf. 

_You are safe now, my child,_ the Thing From JUMP seems to say as he reverently lifts the magazine from the shelf. 

Gintoki gently opens it, allowing the smell of ink and fresh paper to envelop him. He flicks through it, not taking much notice of the content, but simply finding solace in the haven that it provides. Heaving in a sigh of relief, he spends the next half-hour happily ensconced, shielded from the harsh world beyond the sliding doors of the Oedo Mart. But nothing can last forever, and all too soon he’s hit the back pages. Desperately, he looks up one column of dodgy-looking send-away items and down the next, before finally there’s nothing left to read, and nothing left to do but admit he’ll have to go back out into the world. The clerk is giving him the hairy eyeball too – as if the dumb punk doesn’t have anything better to do! Is nowhere safe? Can he not even fondle a copy of JUMP now without people judging him?

Apparently not. So it’s back out into the cold, unfeeling world for Gin-san. Dredging up a sigh from the very depths of his soul, he turns, making his slow, painful way back towards the automatic doors. In his head-hanging despair, he doesn’t notice the cardboard standee advertising display until he’s bumped into it – and even then, it takes him until after the words, _Oh, excuse me, miss,_ are out of his mouth to realise what’s happened. He catches the standee before it can fall over, careful to keep his hands off any suspect places – which is for the best, since it turns out to be a cardboard copy of Otsuu-chan, and Gintoki can well believe Shinpachi would be ready for pistols at dawn over even an accidental grope of her 2D areas. 

Gintoki looks down at it – she’s leaning over slightly, winking and wagging a finger, and has a puffy pink speech bubble coming out of her mouth: _If you don’t buy it, I’ll **** your uncle in the ***!_

Come to think of it, it might not make such a bad gift for Shinpachi, since he’s clearly in a mood – what better way to make up for whatever imaginary wrong Gintoki has committed against him than presenting him with a cardboard manifestation of the reason he’ll never get a real girl?

“Oi,” he begins, turning in the direction of the front counter. Maybe he can promise the clerk some of these millions of yen everyone seems to think he has. “Oi, can I –”

He goes to lift the standee up to drag it over to the counter, when, finally, he gets a look at what Otsuu is actually advertising. He stops, his blood freezing in his veins.

Th-that’s him, isn’t it? There, on the cover of the DVD she’s holding? Him, and – and – 

“No way,” Gintoki manages to stutter out. He barely hears the clatter of cardboard against linoleum and the clerk’s subsequent yelling as he lets Otsuu-chan drop from his trembling fingers. 

Time seems to slow, his mind going utterly blank. Is this the reason why – has everyone been acting so weird because of –

The Thing From JUMP had told him that he was safe here – foul betrayer! – but now, everything is about five hundred thousand times worse than it was a mere ten minutes ago. He would give everything he owns – his Ketsuno Ana videotape collection, his three hundred yen, Shinpachi’s favourite set of soup bowls – to go back in time to when he merely thought everyone else thought he was an extremely rich and handsome eligible bachelor, instead of – this – _this_ –

He bolts from the cruel confines of the store, out into the harsh, unyielding sun of the real world.

No. Wait. Fuck reality. He’s going to run, and he’s not going to stop until he hits the ocean, and everything’s going to be fine and dandy.

Absolutely dandy.


	2. Chapter 2

“One –”

There are a lot of things, Hijikata supposes, that a man can get used to. Four a.m. starts. All-nighters sitting in stinking alleyways with absolutely nothing to show for it but a numb ass and a headache that somehow seems to extend into next week. Diving under the nearest handy piece of furniture whenever anything resembling a number comes out of old man Matsudaira’s mouth.

It’s this last one that he ruminates on as he tries to jam himself under his desk, cursing silently as his previously organised piles of paperwork waft gently to the floor around him. It’s like the world’s shittiest sakura viewing, made even worse by the fact that he’s stone-cold sober.

Yeah, hearing the number one and trying to protect the majority of his internal organs are inextricably linked in his mind. It’s not like it’s a panic reaction or anything! It’s just a conditioned response, like a dog salivating when it hears a bell, or Yorozuya salivating when he hears the words ‘free meal’, or Kondou dropping his pants when he hears... pretty much anything. 

It takes him a good ten seconds to realise that his ears aren’t ringing in the aftermath of close-range gunfire. He notices this because Matsudaira is still talking and he can actually hear what he’s saying, though he’s too busy trying to calm his jackhammering heart to pay much attention.

He sticks his head out cautiously from underneath the desk. Matsudaira’s hands are empty for once, his gun safely in its holster. Still, Hijikata realises, if he wants it to stay that way, he needs to find out whatever it is that Matsudaira’s been talking about – the last thing he needs right now is for the old geezer to jam a bullet up his ass because he didn’t realise he’d been sent on a fetch quest to pick up a copy of Bitch Magazine for the guy’s daughter.

He smiles up at Matsudaira from his hiding place – his _temporary and very necessary shelter,_ dammit – under the table. “Uh, sorry, could you repeat that? It’s just that, ah, Yamazaki let off some fireworks earlier to celebrate the badminton world championships, and my hearing’s shot to hell, haha. Ha.”

Hijikata is depressingly used to being on the receiving end of scorn – he does spend more time with Sougo than any person should have to endure, after all – but it still stings a bit when it comes from someone like Matsudaira. Maybe it’s worse right now because the guy is seriously looming over him, his nostrils flared to truly cavernous proportions. He looks like a pissed-off horse who’s about to stamp Hijikata into the ground.

“I said, _one_ must always take responsibility for _one’s_ actions. ‘Man up,’ if you want it in smaller words. When a man dies, the only words anyone should be able to say at his funeral are that he never turned away from his obligations.” Matsudaira exhales a plume of cigarette smoke. “And here Kondou is always telling me you’re the smart one.”

_Wait, what?_

Hijikata blinks, trying to take this in. Was Pops just being a self-important son-of-a-bitch, rather than counting down – or up – or not at all, really – to Hijikata’s imminent demise? And what’s with the fucking contempt? The whole reason Hijikata’s doing paperwork at this godforsaken hour is that a bunch of his men thought it would be a good idea to race their patrol cars at top speed at the end of their shift; surprising no one, they had proceeded to crash said cars into the canal, then staggered back to headquarters and submitted this travesty of a report about how they crashed three brand-new patrol cars ‘for the betterment of the Shinsengumi and the protection of the citizens of Edo’, because, apparently, it was of the utmost importance that ‘the officers of the law are aware of exactly how fast their cars can go, so that they’re not taken by surprise in a pursuit-type situation’. If he just signs off on it now without making any of the necessary adjustments, then it’ll be on permanent file with his name attached to it, and he won’t be able to fix any of it without causing some fucking shitstorm about ‘destruction of important documents’ and ‘hiding evidence’.

Ugh, just thinking about having to find and train six new recruits to replace these idiots after they commit seppuku is giving him a headache. Though he may have to let them live with a severe tongue-lashing and six months’ toilet-cleaning duties, if only because, unlike most of his men, they can actually write a legible report, even if the entire thing is complete horseshit.

... Shit, the old man’s still glaring down at him. What did he just say again? Kondou says he’s the smart one? Well, he knows _that_ already.

Good old Kondou. Everything else may have gone to hell, but at least there’s _someone_ around here who still has good things to say about him. And okay, Kondou would probably find something nice to say about the mosquito that’s just bitten him on the ass, because he’s just that kind of guy, but that’s not the point.

The point is that Matsudaira says he has to man up and take responsibility. Which is fine, but for what? What is it that he’s supposedly done now? He’s always taking responsibility for everyone else’s cock-ups; it hardly seems fair that he should have to take responsibility for his own as well, especially when Sougo exists. The little turd needs to learn that being in a leadership role means that you’re always at fault, even if you have no idea what’s going on. _Especially_ if you have no idea what’s going on. This is the perfect learning opportunity for him.

Unfortunately, it looks like Matsudaira doesn’t feel the same way. His glare intensifies, even behind the shades that he’s wearing at one in the morning in a dimly lit room, and Hijikata casts his eyes down deferentially, resigning himself to spending the rest of the conversation under the desk. A little grovelling never hurt anyone.

“Just tell me what it is you need me to do, and I’ll do it. I’m at your command.”

Silence follows. And follows some more. It gets to the point where it’s just uncomfortable, and so Hijikata chances an upwards glance. Whether it’s towards doom or salvation, he has no idea, but it’s got to be better than this awkward tableau.

To his growing horror, Pops Matsudaira looks... upset? Like he’s about to burst into tears of frustration or something. Talk about embarrassing.

Sheesh, this just keeps getting worse. Now would be a good time for him to cut in with something vague yet supportive, but his mind is an empty wasteland.

Matsudaira takes a deep breath. Opens his mouth.

“You have to stop this immediately!”

Hijikata freezes. Stop what? Being on the floor? Should he get up?

“Uh....”

“I can’t take it anymore! My credit card can’t take it anymore!” One of Matsudaira’s hands flicks his cigarette butt at Hijikata’s face with pinpoint precision, while the other seamlessly pulls out a new one from the pack. “I don’t care what you do in your free time, but what you’re doing in your free time is now inside my house, and both myself and my wallet can’t enjoy that.”

Free... time? Hijikata doesn’t even know what that is. He doesn’t know what Pops is talking about, either – but that’s okay, he’s sure he’ll find out soon enough.

“... I’ll be a homeless old man, and you’ll be the one to blame! Do you know what my mortgage repayments are like? Do you know how much my wife spends at the salon? I do, because my credit card was declined and now she’s telling me if I don’t cough up the cash I may as well slit my belly, since I’m a failure as a pay cheque now as well as a failure as a man. Fix this mess, or _you’ll_ be the one slitting your belly. Understand?”

_What mess? What the hell is he talking about?_

Nothing Pops has said in the past three minutes has even _begun_ to make any sense to him. Has someone been defrauding his credit card? Does he want him to go find out who it is and give them a beating? What any of this has to do with his barely existent free time he’s sure he doesn’t know, but _that_ is at least something Hijikata can do. 

“All right, all right,” he says. “So who stole your card? What’ve they been buying? If you tell me the last place they shopped I can –”

“ _Idiot._ ” 

Okay, and _now_ the barrel of Matsudaira’s gun is grinding into his forehead, and his crazed, bloodshot eyes are boring directly into Hijikata’s.

“Who do you _think_ has been buying your crap? Me? My wife? I’m talking about _Kuriko_ , you _ass_.”

Panic shoots up Hijikata’s spine. Hasn’t he made it as clear as he possibly can that he has no interest in Matsudaira’s daughter? For God’s sake, he’d pretended to be a mayo prince from Planet Mayo just to get away from her, and exit Matsudaira’s office with his neck – if not his dignity – still intact. What the hell has happened _now?_

“Kuriko? Ah, Pops, I’m – I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t been selling anything to her – I haven’t _done_ anything to her –”

“Haven’t done anything to her?!” Matsudaira’s finger twitches on the trigger, and Hijikata realises that this is it – he’s going to die here, on his hands and knees under a desk, murdered in cold blood by his own superior.

Oh man, Sougo is going to have a fucking field day. A cold sweat breaks out across his forehead as he thinks about what the newspaper headlines might say.

Why don’t they have a proper PR department again? Oh, that’s right – Kondou had been so happy that Sougo had asked to be in charge of all that, he’d been unwilling to listen to reason.

_But Toushi, he’s so enthusiastic about it! We have to encourage him when he shows an interest in something positive!_

Well, Sougo’s going to be enthusiastically spinning a tale of Hijikata’s sordid death soon enough. At least someone will get some sort of enjoyment out of his pointless demise.

_Degenerate Shinsengumi Vice-Commander Found on All Fours Under Desk. What You Read Next Will Shock You!!!_

... Oh, wait, that’s just Sougo’s Jitter post from last Thursday. He’s not sure why he even reads that crap, beyond some sort of vague ‘know your enemy’ kind of thing.

The old man’s still talking – yelling, technically – and Hijikata supposes he should tune back in, so that he can at least find out what the last thing he hears before his death will be.

“ – You corrupted her! A delicate flower in the full bloom of youth, and you plucked her petals with your filthy fingers –”

Great. He doesn’t want his last thoughts to be about Kuriko, but apparently that’s the way it’s going to be. Why can’t the guy start singing the praises of the supreme condiment, or maybe list all the best things about cigarettes? Matsudaira understands the second of those things, at least. Hijikata could gladly meet his fate if he were being lulled into the great beyond by a loving description of how damn _good_ it feels to take that first drag of the day – the one before Sougo shows up with his bazooka, and then Kondou has to be rescued from Otae’s fists, and then the myriad other things that are somehow his problem come crashing down on his head. 

“ – If you don’t fix this right now, it’s seppuku time.”

... It’s not already seppuku time? Or murder time, he supposes, if you want to be accurate. But Pops probably isn’t above shooting him, then sticking a knife in his hand and telling everyone he did it to himself. 

He’s not prepared for this! He’d thought he was about to meet the sweet embrace of the beyond! Death would be easier than trying to work out what the hell it is that Matsudaira actually wants.

The gun presses harder into his sweaty forehead, and the brief moment of resignation to his fate dissipates – now that he’s been given a reprieve, he finds that he wants to live once more.

Well, he thinks so, anyway. He’ll probably be regretting being alive again within the next thirty seconds. It’s a feeling he’s used to.

“Look, Pops, I don’t know what she told you, but I haven’t been near her,” Hijikata says, not sure talking is the best idea but not sure what else to do. “I swear. What do you want me to swear on? I’ll swear on it. If you talk to her –”

“ _Talk_ to her? _Hell_ no. Do you think it’s so easy to talk to girls? I’ve never been able to do it. Not when I was young, and not now. And what kind of pervert father would talk to his daughter about that kind of thing? No, I just want it to _stop_.” 

Matsudaira is rambling incoherently again, but at least he’s backed off a little, his gun leaving Hijikata’s forehead. He stands, fixing Hijikata with a steely glare. 

“Do you hear me? Stop. Stop making the DVDs. If you can do that, then my daughter will stop buying them, and then _maybe_ we can be friends again. Does that sound like something you can do?”

Hijikata remains firmly unenlightened, but at least Matsudaira has given him an actual question he can answer.

“Okay. Sure. I’ll stop. Whatever you want.”

“Gooooooooood.” Matsudaira’s next word practically comes out as a purr, and the gun goes back in its holster. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say – I was sure you’d see things my way. It’d be a shame to lose someone Kondou likes so much – I can’t stand it when he cries.”

And with that, Matsudaira saunters out the way he came, without so much as a backward glance, cigarette smoke trailing in his wake. 

It takes Hijikata a few moments to remember to breathe again – sure, Matsudaira turning up, waving a gun around, threatening to shoot people and maybe even popping off a few shots isn’t exactly an unusual occurrence, but he wouldn’t exactly say it’s the kind of thing that has gotten any more pleasant over time. But then again, very few things in his life have gotten more pleasant over time, so he’ll just have to deal with it.

He wriggles out awkwardly from under the desk, grateful that there are no witnesses, and cracks his neck with a pained noise. Groping around in his pockets, he pulls out a cigarette and lights it as he surveys the room, sighing in relief as the nicotine hits his system.

The paperwork is still scattered about the place, and he picks it up, arranging it back into order as he thinks on what Matsudaira said.

DVDs? The hell? He barely has time to watch DVDs, let alone make one, and he sure as hell doesn’t know _how_ to make one. The closest he’s ever got to making a DVD is setting up the VCR to record _Ladies 4_ – and that’s just for private viewing, not public consumption.

Oh, well. If he’s learned one thing, it’s that it’s best to just go along with Matsudaira’s whims. These things seem to have a way of working themselves out in the end.

And if they don’t... well, someone else can take the blame.

He checks the time as he goes out into the corridor. Just coming up on one-thirty. Good – Yamazaki’s shift finished at midnight, so he should be in his quarters by now.

_Only one way to find out._

He bangs on Yamazaki’s door. “Oi! Yamazaki! You awake?”

He waits at least fifteen seconds – which is a lot longer than usual, out of respect for the fact that it’s after midnight – before he runs out of patience and slides the door open. There’s a Yamazaki-shaped lump on a futon in the middle of the floor, so Hijikata marches up to it and uses his foot to roll it out from under the blanket and onto the tatami. 

“Oi, Yamazaki!”

The lump – a pyjama-clad Yamazaki – turns over, rubbing at his eyes. If Hijikata didn’t know better, he’d say that he looks cranky... but being cranky at your superior is automatic seppuku, and Hijikata knows that Yamazaki knows this.

“Vice-Chief?”

No point beating about the bush. “Pops says that I’m involved in some sort of DVD creation and distribution ring. I have no idea what the hell he’s on about. Find out what’s going on and report back.”

He turns to leave.

“Vice-Chief?”

He turns back to see Yamazaki staring at him plaintively.

“Do you need this right now, or can it wait till morning?”

He exhales a stream of cigarette smoke. Yamazaki’s eye twitches as if he blew it right in his face, which he absolutely did not – it was over his shoulder at worst.

“This is coming direct from Matsudaira. What do you think?”

Yamazaki’s mouth stretches into a thin smile. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Good answer.” 

He heads back down the corridor, ignoring the muted crash and accompanying yell from Yamazaki’s quarters – guy must’ve tripped over something in his rush to get on the job.

Where the hell was he, before all this started? It feels like a lifetime ago.

Oh, yeah – three patrol cars at the bottom of the canal, and six officers who are about to become much more intimately acquainted with all of the Shinsengumi’s toilets in the coming months.

He sits himself down with a sigh. At least this is something he knows how to deal with. Let Yamazaki sort out Matsudaira’s weird porn DVD problem.

He picks up his pen, and starts to write.

 

***

 

“No, Vice-Chief, I haven’t seen him anywhere.”

Hijikata sighs. This is the third inquiry he’s made into Yamazaki’s whereabouts, and each has been more useless than the last. Nobody has seen Yamazaki since Hijikata’s last encounter with him, which was the better part of thirty-six hours ago.

Or so they say, anyway. Each denial has been accompanied by awkward throat-clearing or a sudden inability to maintain eye contact or lame excuses as to why they have to go and do something else. Pathetic. He didn’t train his men to baulk at answering simple questions!

A gleam of light upon a bald head captures his attention. Oh, good – it’s Harada. Surely _he_ can comprehend the words ‘Where the hell is Yamazaki?’ and answer in the manner befitting an officer of the Shinsengumi.

“Harada!”

Harada almost trips as he makes a sudden turn down a side corridor. The hell – that is definitely _not_ where he was originally headed.

Hijikata picks up his pace, turning the same corner. He can see Harada hurrying along, practically running for the safety of the next junction. Unbelievable. He’s all for striking fear into the hearts of his subordinates, but not if it means that they’re all too shit-scared of him to actually stay within his presence long enough to hear his orders.

“Harada! Oi! Get back here!”

Harada freezes for a long moment, before turning around with glacial slowness. His eyes are wide, his mouth frozen in a smile that looks physically painful.

“Vice-Chief. Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

Hijikata’s never had much reason to think about it before, but wow, Harada is a terrible liar. He makes a mental note to keep him away from any kind of spy work. Not that he could do much worse than Yamazaki ‘I’m Here to Spy for the Shinsengumi’ Sagaru.

Hijikata glowers and Harada gulps, beads of sweat sprouting across his bald head. “Well, that’s not a surprise, given that you were moving faster than the speed of light. Got somewhere to be, officer?”

“Ah, nowhere that’s more important than anywhere my Vice-Commander needs me to be,” Harada manages to get out, with only a minimal amount of stuttering. 

“Didn’t think so.” He keeps Harada waiting for a moment, lighting a cigarette while he tries to swallow down the worst of his irritation. “Look,” he says, trying to sound reasonable. “All I want to know is if you’ve seen Yamazaki. And if you have, where.”

Harada’s painful smile is still fixed in place, but now his eyes are moving from left to right as if desperately searching for any avenue of escape. 

“Yamazaki?” he asks, as if he didn’t just hear Hijikata say exactly that.

It takes drawing on a reserve of inner strength Hijikata didn’t know he even possessed not to bite his cigarette in two. “ _Yes. Yamazaki._ ”

“H-He’s in the common room.” 

Hijikata narrows his eyes. He _knows_ that’s not true, because he’s not a fucking idiot and the common room was the first place he looked.

“So you’re telling me if I go there right now, I’ll find Yamazaki?”

“Y-yes, Vice-Chief.”

Clearly a bald-faced lie... and yet, Harada looks frightened enough that Hijikata wonders if he might actually be telling the truth. 

... Eh, what the hell. It’s not like he has any better leads to go on. He’ll go look, because even if he doesn’t find Yamazaki, at least he’ll have the satisfaction of coming back here and nailing Harada’s hide to the wall for lying to him. 

He starts to turn back the way he came, before noticing that Harada is still standing at attention, his back so rigid that Hijikata honestly wonders for a moment whether he’s in any danger of snapping in half.

“Dismissed,” he mutters, and Harada visibly sags in relief, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve.

Hijikata shakes his head as he strides down the corridor. Honestly, they wouldn’t have to be half so scared of him if they didn’t tell him bullshit lies and just did their damn jobs.

Because it _is_ a bullshit lie. He knows that Yamazaki isn’t in the common room. Even if he were to say hypothetically that he _was_ , it wouldn’t make any sense. Why would Yamazaki spend thirty-six straight hours in the common room? The ceiling isn’t even high enough to swing a badminton racquet, and Hijikata’s pretty sure that Yamazaki goes into some sort of withdrawal if he doesn’t sneak away from his actually assigned work to go play with his shuttlecock. Hijikata has seen what happens when he’s stuck in a single room for days on end, and it’s not an experience he cares to repeat.

He slides open the door with just the right amount of force, enjoying the sound it makes as it thwacks into the doorframe.

Shock of shocks – the room is empty. It’s not even littered with food wrappers or contraband porn mags; it’s bereft of literally everything except the furniture. 

The corner of his mouth tugs into a triumphant smile. Of course, he’d known he was right all along – it’d never been in doubt – but still, it’s always good to have confirmation of just how right you are.

“Hah.” 

He wonders which wall he should nail Harada’s hide to. Out in the open, so that everyone can learn from his mistakes? Or in Hijikata’s own personal quarters, perhaps, so that he can enjoy it on his own time? The first option would be for the general betterment of the Shinsengumi... but then again, would it be so wrong for him to do a little something for himself just this once, given that his job is so thankless?

No matter. There’ll be time to decide later. Right now, he needs to get back to the task at hand, which is locating Yamazaki and solving old man Matsudaira’s problem, preferably without finding out any details of what the problem actually entails. He’s learned the hard way that it’s always better not to know.

He’s about to go do exactly that when a flicker of light catches his eye. 

Huh. That’s... weird. The light’s coming from the far corner of the room. Specifically, from inside the cupboard where the board games and all that kind of stuff are kept. There’s no reason why a cupboard containing UNO cards and Othello boards should be flickering around the edges, almost as if....

Almost as if someone was watching a TV inside the cupboard.

Hijikata narrows his eyes. On the one hand, that would be _ridiculous_. On the other, this is Yamazaki he’s talking about. 

He eases his hand down to the hilt of his sword as he moves silently across the floor. Now that he’s getting closer, he can hear the faintest of noises coming from the corner. It sounds like an argument, and his fingers twitch in anticipation for the briefest of moments, until he registers that the sound is tinny, like it’s being filtered through cheapass speakers. 

_TV, then._

If Yamazaki has spent the past day and a half hiding in a cupboard and watching television, then seppuku is going to be the least of his worries.

He rests his fingers on the edge of the cupboard door, taking a moment to savour the anticipation, and slides his sword from its scabbard just a little as he positions himself for maximum intimidation.

_Breathe from the diaphragm. Make it count._

“YAMAZAKI!”

He slams open the cupboard door to reveal Yamazaki seated inside, open carton of milk by his knee, anpan in one hand and a remote control in the other, and a look on his face that suggests he realises just how dead he’s about to be. 

“Vice-Chief!” Yamazaki shrieks as he tries to leap to attention, then shrieks again as he smacks his head on the bottom of a shelf, drops his anpan, spills his milk, and collapses onto the floor at Hijikata’s feet. 

Hijikata stares down at him – and, just for a moment, he wonders if there’s any punishment he could mete out that would be worse than the fact that Yamazaki has to go through life being Yamazaki. 

Well – he supposes he’ll just have to invent one, then. 

“Yamazaki –” he starts, as Yamazaki cowers away from him. As he moves, there’s a small avalanche of anpan wrappers from inside the cupboard, as well as... a stack of DVD cases?

_DVDs?_

Hijikata blinks.

_Wait._

Did Yamazaki actually _find_ the DVDs that the old man was banging on about?

Did he then somehow manage to interpret ‘find out what’s going on and report back’ as ‘find out what’s going on, then lock yourself in a cupboard and bingewatch the whole damn boxset instead of informing your superior’? So close, and yet so far.

Still, it seems like Yamazaki is actually _doing_ his assigned task, just for once in his life... or, at least, what he _believes_ to be his assigned task. Then why the hell is he hiding, and why the hell has everyone been so damn cagey about it? 

And why the hell is he shaking like a leaf now, a look of utter terror in his eyes? 

The words _Good job, Yamazaki_ stick in his throat. Yamazaki has, after all, managed to achieve at least half of what he was ordered to do, which is a solid pass in Shinsengumi terms. And he’s pretty sure that some sort of offhand praise would go a long way towards getting Yamazaki verbal again. But it’s just so damn hard to get the words out! It’s not his fault that his men give him so few opportunities to commend them on their achievements. The part of his brain that’s responsible for giving compliments has gone rusty from disuse.

He settles for picking up some of the DVD cases and squinting at them in the dim light of the screen.

... Maybe Sougo is right, and he does need glasses after all. Sure, Sougo had said that while pouring hot sauce into his eyes, but maybe he created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because if he doesn’t need glasses, then what he’s seeing on the DVD covers is real. And if what he’s seeing is real, then he is tremendously fucked, in a way that even jamming a sword into his own guts can’t fix. He could fillet himself from crotch to throat like a fish, and it would do nothing to remedy the absolute fuckfest his life has suddenly become.

He stares down at one of the cases in his hand. The cover ‘artwork’ – so to speak – is difficult to make out, given that his hand _may_ be trembling ever so slightly, but it appears to be a blurry photograph of himself and frigging Yorozuya. The Hijikata on the cover is mid-yell, fist pulled back in the preliminary stages of delivering a devastating knockout blow, while the permed idiot is smirking in a way that makes the actual Hijikata want to reach into the cover with both hands and choke him into unconsciousness. Maybe beat his head against the wall a few times, just to be sure.

He flicks hastily through a few of the other DVDs, but somehow each one is worse than the last. Who the hell took these photos? Why do the two of them look like they’re hatefucking each other with their eyes on every occasion? Who’s responsible for this travesty of photoediting? Because that’s one hundred per cent what this is. No way is this shit real.

_... Wait._

He scrunches up his eyes as he tries to think things through. The headache he can feel coming on is going to be an absolute bitch. Maybe he’ll name it Yorozuya.

 _DVD cases contain DVDs. The content of DVDs is generally reflective of what’s on the cover – except for that time when Sougo bought a pirated copy of the third season of_ In This World, There Are Only Demons, You Bastard!! _, but then the DVD inside was a weird foreign costume drama subtitled in some Amanto language – so if this is what the covers look like, then the content must be...._

He scrubs his free hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as the headache moves its schedule forward.

Would it be so bad if he just turned around and left the room without a word? Not just to Yamazaki, but to anyone else, ever again? He’s not like Pops Matsudaira. He can’t build character through his own humiliation. If he could, then he’d be invincible by now, given the crap he goes through on a near-daily basis.

No, social embarrassment does nothing for him except make him want to die. Which is why he definitely should _not_ look at whatever horrors are on Yamazaki’s screen of shame.

Running and hiding is actually sounding like a plausible strategy, pride be damned. About the only thing stopping him right now is duty, and probably a healthy dose of mortification. Matsudaira ordered Hijikata to get to the bottom of this; in turn, Hijikata ordered Yamazaki to get to the bottom of this. Yamazaki actually held up his end of the bargain and waded into the depths of whatever the hell _this_ is in order to find out what was going on. Can Hijikata do no less? Can he live with _this_ being the last thing he’ll ever be remembered for?

More to the point, if Pops finds out that he ran from his duty, then death will sound like a blessed relief in comparison to whatever the old bastard is going to cook up for him.

Taking a deep breath, he pulls his hand away from his eyes and drags his gaze past the quailing Yamazaki, over the improbably large pile of anpan wrappers, and beyond the scattered milk cartons, arriving inexorably at the TV screen.

The image is static – apparently Yamazaki at least had the presence of mind to hit the pause button somewhere in amongst all the screaming and the begging for his life – but in a way, that’s even worse, because it’s paused on the absolute worst thing he’s ever seen in his life.

It’s him... and Yorozuya. They appear to be mid-wrestle, rolling on the ground, limbs tangled, clothes half torn off. They both appear to be furious, but also... something other than furious. Somehow. The DVD has been paused at just the exact wrong moment, so that neither of them looks quite convincing. If he wanted to read it in a _really_ uncharitable way, he’d say that they almost look like they’re enjoying themselves on some level.

He thinks that maybe he’s forgotten how to breathe, but also that this may be for the best in the long run. A dead man doesn’t need to know how to breathe. He’s getting a head start. Always was a fast learner.

Yamazaki lets out some sort of involuntary squeaking sound, and he comes back to himself just enough to remember that this is real. He is one hundred per cent fucked. Actually, no, make that a thousand per cent, because Matsudaira’s teenaged daughter has been watching this – this – whatever this is. Does that mean that Matsudaira’s also seen it? Is this what passes for father-daughter bonding in the Matsudaira household? What’s wrong with these people?!

His chest heaves. That whole ‘breathing’ thing is still elusive. Oh, well.

He’s aware that he’s probably scaring the living hell out of Yamazaki, looming over him in the dark, lit only by the glow of his own impending doom freeze-framed on the TV. Not that he cares. Hell, Yamazaki doesn’t realise how lucky he is. Nobody’s ever going to take footage of him swinging his badminton racquet around and then edit it for their own perverse purposes. Even if they did, no one would buy it, so it’s a moot issue.

He manages a breath – should be enough to get him through the next thirty seconds – and slowly, carefully, bends at the knees. Yamazaki is stock-still on the floor, even when Hijikata crouches next to him and removes the remote from his lax fingers.

With a strangely detached calm, he presses play.

The recording starts back up, and it’s definitely worse in motion. There’s taunting, and heavy breathing, and grunting, and insults that don’t sound nearly as cool as they’d undoubtedly sounded in his head when he’d been saying them.

And he did say them. He can’t remember when, but he knows he said them. His last hope – that this is entirely faked – shrivels and dies within him.

He watches, entranced, unable to tear his eyes from the screen even as he contemplates how his life is, in fact, over. Yamazaki is frozen in place next to him; Hijikata would let him go without incident if he left now, but apparently he’s just as spellbound as Hijikata himself.

Hijikata’s brain, struggling to reboot as it is, can only describe the lurid images on the screen as ‘yell porn’. It’s just shot after shot of him and Yorozuya rolling around on the ground and shouting threats at each other, while apparently failing to do much actual damage.

He finds that some of the sluggishness in his head is starting to drift away, burnt to embers by the swiftly rekindling fire of his anger. Who the hell would either watch or make this kind of shit? Why would anyone care about him punching that jerk’s face into the dirt?

... Oh shit, he remembers this day. This was the time when he was on his way back to the barracks after some godawful Amanto beast literally took a dump the size of a house on downtown Edo, before making its lumbering, slobbering way towards the Shougun’s castle. _That_ had been one of the more forgettable days in this job, and it had just been the mayonnaise on the fucking cake when, staggering home, he’d encountered the stupid Yorozuya and his stupid leering face and his stupid bitchy comments about how that was a good look for him, and now his crappy outsides matched his crappy insides. The only satisfying thing about the whole debacle was that by the end of it, at least he wasn’t the only one covered in alien shit.

Has Yamazaki actually been _watching_ this? Alone? In a cupboard? Hijikata eyes him incredulously. 

_God, I hope that’s spilled milk on his pants._

As if the thing with Yorozuya’s robot hadn’t been weird enough.

In any case, he supposes that answers the question of who the fuck would even watch this kind of shit. As for who would _make_ it....

There’s really only one person he knows who’d both stoop this low and be this desperate for cash, and that’s Yorozuya. It makes perfect sense.

And yet.

 _This_ is what that idiot decided to edit into some kind of weirdly sexual montage? This shit-stained screaming match?

“Yamazaki,” he says, his voice strangely calm, and coming to him as if from very far away. “Where did you get this?”

Yamazaki takes a moment to reply, as if he has to psych himself up to speak first. “Th-the Oedo Mart on the corner, Vice-Chief. Though really I could have gotten them anywhere. They’re all over the place – really, everywhere. The Book On has them used half-price, and you can rent them from –”

Okay, for his own sanity, Hijikata’s going to stop listening now. Clearly, Yorozuya’s been selling this shit anywhere he can get cash for it.

Not that he’s overly surprised, in the brief moment when he manages to scrape his wits together, but he still can’t help but feel weirdly disappointed. He’d thought that the guy’s fantasies would just be the normal kind of terrible, not the kind that gets double-wrapped and kept behind the store counter. Not that he’s thought about what that jackass might fantasise about. It has literally never crossed his mind to wonder what Yorozuya might get off to. Why on earth would it? Obviously, he has to think about _something_ – what kind of guy doesn’t think about that kind of thing sometimes? – but making niche not-quite-sex tapes about your acquaintances without their knowledge and selling them to the general public is setting the bar at a new low, even for him. 

It feels like his entire face is twitching, and the horrified look on Yamazaki’s face confirms that he’s probably looking scarier than usual. Or it could just be that he’s crushing one of the DVD cases in his fist. Or the fact that he’s blocking Yamazaki’s only escape route. There are a lot of things that could be worrying Yamazaki right now, to be honest.

Well, it must be Yamazaki’s lucky day, because he’s just been bumped several places down Hijikata’s list of priorities. Right off it, in fact, since the whole thing is now taken up entirely with finding Yorozuya, punching him in the face, and force-feeding him every copy of these DVDs, one by one, until there are none left anywhere in the entire world. 

He fumbles for a cigarette or ten with one hand, while grabbing one of the DVD cases with the other. He barely spares it a glance to tell which one it is – they’re all uniformly awful – and stands back up.

Yamazaki stares at him with the wide, hopeless eyes of one awaiting his death sentence. Hijikata doesn’t have time to deal with him, though, and ordering seppuku would be futile – the little jerk has such a seppuku backlog that it’s pointless to add any more to the pile.

He could kick him in the ass, he supposes, but Hijikata gets the feeling that it wouldn’t be the panacea it normally is. No, he has bigger fish to fry. Fish with stupid hair and dead eyes, and penchants for making erotic videos of government officials. Yeah, kicking Yorozuya’s ass is pretty much all he has to look forward to in life right now.

DVD in hand, fury in absolute, he storms from the room, down the corridor, across the grounds, through the gate and out into the street.


	3. Chapter 3

Okay, no. 

Screw the ocean. He’s not going there. The ocean isn’t the one exploiting his body for monetary gain. Clearly, if Gintoki wants to fix this problem, he’s going to have to go to the source.

And the source is obviously the same source as all the other shitty, infuriating, inexplicable things in his life: the Shinsengumi. Who else has the endless free time and infinite taxpayer dollars required in order to a) hire a team of 3D animators, and b) get them to fabricate a series of videos based upon a bunch of fangirl fap fantasies?

Because it’s certainly not actual footage. Despite the fact he’d only caught a fleeting glimpse of the DVD covers, everything about them now seems to be carved indelibly into his brain, and the whole thing seems just a little off, a little too uncanny valley, a little too just plain wrong – there were the definite beginnings of love handles around his waistline, for one thing, and who the hell has hair like that? If this farce is going to continue, he’s going to have to have words with the animators about accurately representing his sleek, svelte form.

Besides, the whole thing is clearly just fake in general. As if he would go around exchanging smouldering looks with some jackass who eats his own weight in condiments every week! What kind of idiot do they take him for? No, it’s clearly just a Shinsengumi-sponsored scam, designed to make him look bad and raise funds for fancy new lanterns for their stupid cop cars. Government workers with their greedy fingers in the public purse once again, _quelle surprise_. 

He strides in the general direction of the Shinsengumi compound, shoppers scattering in his wake. The air is heavy with heat and humidity, weighing his clothes down with sweat; he knows that this kind of weather makes him a bit nuts at the best of times, but the madness that’s creeping into his brain has nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with the no-good, money-stealing assholes who dare to call themselves a police force.

If he paid tax, this isn’t how he’d want it to be spent! He finds himself indignant on behalf of the good people of Edo. If their hard-earned yen were going towards good pornography, that would be one thing, but instead they’re just going towards shaky, poorly captured footage of two guys yelling bullshit at each other in various locations. Who can get off to that? Only weirdoes and perverts, that’s who.

Still. _If_ – and it’s a big if – _if_ the videos are actually real in any way, shape, or form, then surely he is owed massive, massive recompense. It’s not just the use of his – admittedly stunning – image that makes him feel dirty and used; more to the point, it’s the fact that they’ve used his labour for free. _He’s_ the one who’s (possibly) been running around Edo and making a complete dickhead of himself! _He’s_ the one who was filmed strutting around a sauna in nothing but a skimpy towel! It’s _his_ completely legitimate grievances against a government official that are being treated as some kind of softcore foreplay! If there’s one thing that Sakata Gintoki does _not_ do, it’s free work. Hell, he’ll barely do it when it’s paid.

Running the events of the past twenty-four hours back through his head, everything is finally falling completely, terribly into place. The stares of the people on the street. The inexplicable demands for money. Clearly, those DVDs have been selling like hotcakes – and clearly, everyone has been labouring under the misapprehension that he’s being fairly compensated for his efforts. 

Dammit, if he’s going to be a celebrity, then he demands the celebrity lifestyle that comes with it! An interview series with Ketsuno Ana! A swimming pool filled with nabe! A super-cool leopard print coat with a fluffy collar! Scores of cute girls hanging on his every word –

_Wait. Wait. That last one._

The memory of the conversation he’d had yesterday morning with the group of giggling girls suddenly rises in his mind like a spectre, and he almost stumbles over his own feet. He’d thought they’d wanted to know more about Shinpachi, but knowing what he knows now, the whole thing suddenly takes on an entirely different cast.

_Oh, God. Oh, no._

What had he _said?_

For a moment, he’s caught between two competing impulses. The first is to try to recall every tiny scrap of that conversation in order to get an idea of how well and truly he might have fucked himself. The second is to give himself some kind of massive head trauma, in the hope that he might forget everything he’s ever said in his whole life, ever. 

Both have their upsides and downsides – but either way, before he can decide which one he wants to go with, his subconscious makes the decision for him. 

_“So, you’re saying you think he’s hot?”_

_“Oh, yeah, he’s hot as fuck!”_

Gintoki gives up the struggle of trying to keep the strangled cry of despair from escaping his lips. He does some quick calculations in his head. While not _absolutely_ the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, it’s certainly bumped a couple of others down his top ten list. There are now people in the world who think _he_ thinks Hijikata Toushirou is hot as fuck. Which he does not. Obviously. Who would? What kind of person could possibly entertain such a sick fantasy? No one who was in the possession of their proper faculties, that’s for sure. 

He hadn’t known Okita’s sister long enough to diagnose what, exactly, her problem might have been – sure, she’d _seemed_ nice enough, and if he had to, he might even cop to thinking she was pretty cute. But surely anyone who spent their time sitting around making moon-eyes over Hijikata had to be soft in the head. Though, Gintoki grudgingly admits, it might also have depended on who else was available: compared with a blood sibling and Otae’s gorilla stalker, he is willing to concede that Hijikata might have been the least stomach-churning option. And, he supposes, context is important: by the standards of Hicksville, Bumfuck Nowhere, Hijikata was probably pretty hot. To an Edo sophisticate like himself, however, Hijikata’s mediocrity, looks-wise, is all too evident. 

Not that he’s ever spent any time contemplating Hijikata’s looks! It’s just a general conclusion drawn from dispassionate observations over the years. Everyone gathers basic data on people they spend time with! For example:

1) Kagura has red hair. Obviously. It’s not weird for him to know this.

2) Sakamoto laughs a lot. Anyone who’s spent five seconds around him would be able to say that.

3) Hijikata could be considered attractive by certain people, but only those who haven’t been exposed to attractive people on the regular. Anyone who _has_ been exposed to attractive people on a frequent basis would rate him as an eight at most. Wait, that’s too high – a six. Maybe a six-point-five if they’re drunk or missing an eye. Seems to be a lot of that going around.

But yeah, the guy’s a solid six. Nothing to write home about. Gintoki doubts he’d even remember what the stupid bastard looks like, if not for the fact that they seem to run into each other on a weekly basis.

There. See? Nothing weird going on. Just your regular, run-of-the-mill observations.

Gintoki attempts to scrub away the sweat that’s dripping into his eyes, but succeeds only in rubbing more sweat into them. Great. Now he’s cranky _and_ half-blinded.

Where the hell even _is_ the Shinsengumi compound anyway? Usually he just seems to find his way there without even trying. Maybe it has some kind of curse on it that means it can’t be found by anyone who’s deliberately seeking it out. Maybe _he_ has some sort of curse on him that means he’s doomed to say embarrassing shit about surly six-point-fives with stupid hair.

... Okay. Just so that nobody can accuse him of being unfair and only harping on the negatives, he _will_ admit that Hijikata has good hair. It’s straight and shiny in a way that Gintoki will never admit makes him envious. Of course, the style his hair naturally falls into is those ridiculous v-shaped bangs, but even this has its upside, i.e., that Gintoki feels less insecure about the dumb shit that his own hair has been known to do.

And there are other things about him that aren’t totally useless. The guy’s in good physical shape, although that’s true of almost everyone Gintoki knows, so it doesn’t mean much. He’s not a _completely_ shit person to have your back in a fight. The kids don’t hate him. He has a voice and general demeanour that, Gintoki imagines, would be excellent for commanding obedience, which is a handy trait for somebody with the word ‘commander’ in their job title.

Yeah, Hijikata will probably manage to make someone reasonably happy someday, so long as that person doesn’t have any actual standards or expectations. They’d have to be happy hanging out with someone who’s a pissy bitch at least forty per cent of the time, with another forty per cent being devoted to him shovelling mayonnaise into his stupid mouth, and the remaining twenty per cent spent on being a pissy bitch _and_ shovelling mayonnaise into his stupid mouth.

What is _with_ that, anyway? He’s pretty sure that Hijikata learnt the food pyramid the wrong way around during his misspent youth, and now believes that most of his dietary intake is supposed to consist of fats and oils, since they’re at the top, and top clearly means best. How else to explain the atrocity that is his diet? Maybe the Shinsengumi should arrest him for crimes against nutrition. He’s pretty sure Sougo would be only too happy to work something out.

Or maybe they could just arrest him for crimes against Gin-san’s body. After all, Hijikata surely would’ve had to sign off on any money-making ventures the Shinsengumi decided to undertake, so these bullshit DVDs that Otsuu’s flogging must’ve been approved by the Vice-Commander himself.

Not to mention, you know, the fact that he’s _in_ them.

The anger from earlier returns at full force, aided in no small part by the fact that he’s _finally_ spotted the Shinsengumi gate in the distance. He’s not here to damn that jackass with faint praise; he’s here to kick his ass and tell him to stop stealing his image for prurient purposes.

And oh, speak of the Demon Vice-Commander: there he is, striding up the street with a stomp in his step and the twinkle of an impending aneurysm in his eye. He looks about one second away from either exploding into apoplectic rage or having some kind of breakdown, and that’s just great, that’s excellent, because Gintoki isn’t in the mood to hold back.

“Hey, asshole!” he bellows, taking a moment to relish the way that said asshole jumps and looks around at the sound. “Yeah, you! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Hijikata recovers quickly, advancing on Gintoki with murderous intent written clear in every taut line of his body. “What _I’m_ doing? This is a new low even for you, Yorozuya! I always knew you didn’t have a decent bone in your body, but I never thought you’d stoop so low as to drag other people down to your level of depravity!”

At this distance, Gintoki can see that Hijikata is holding something in his hand, waving it about like a madman, and – oh. It’s a DVD case.

_Oh._

Any last chance of settling this thing like civilised gentlemen has just gone out the window, and Gintoki feels a cleansing wave of rage sweep through his body as he gets up in this shithead’s personal space.

“Depravity?” he says incredulously. “You wanna talk about depravity?”

He snatches the DVD case from Hijikata and spares the cover a glance, before he’s forced to look away. The content of the cover is bad enough – a picture of him and Hijikata scuffling in the dirt – but worse yet is the quality. The whole thing is a pile of poorly framed, pixellated garbage, the red font of the title so blurry that it’s barely legible. To be associated with such low-quality product is, quite frankly, an embarrassment. Gin-san has standards, dammit! This isn’t the kind of thing he’d normally put his name to! Where the hell has his agent even been during all this, anyway?

“Is this where my taxes are going?!” he yells, gesticulating wildly with the DVD. “Sadaharu could make a better cover than this, and he doesn’t even have opposable thumbs!” He thinks so, anyway. Hard to know from week to week what that mutt’s capable of.

“Sadaharu – ?” Hijikata cuts himself off with a sharp shake of the head, before grabbing the DVD back and flinging it off somewhere behind him. Gintoki is vaguely aware of some kind of hullaballoo going on in the general vicinity of where the DVD landed, as some passersby make a scramble for it. It seems they have some nosy onlookers, heads turning at the raised voices, but it’s not his main concern right now. 

Hijikata’s eyes have taken on a decidedly crazed gleam, spittle flying from his mouth in his fury. “I don’t care whether that damn dog has a master’s degree in graphic design from Edo U! What I care about is that you’ve been peddling your shitty wet dreams to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and you’ve dragged me into your own stupid mess! I oughta arrest you right now!”

As if to emphasise this clearly absurd statement, Hijikata reaches out and wraps one of his hands in Gintoki’s shirt. An appreciative _ooh_ rises up from the crowd that Gintoki belatedly realises has gathered around them, and shit, he can’t get one-upped like this, so he grabs Hijikata’s collar and shakes him roughly. The crowd _aahs_ , and warning bells are clanging in his head, but his confusion and rage are louder still.

“Arrest _me?!_ You’re the one editing together his shameful fantasies into this sick little slideshow! Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Maybe I should beat you into the ground right here, since you seem to enjoy that kind of thing so much!”

Hijikata’s hand tightens in Gintoki’s shirt, even as his other hand hovers threateningly close to his sword. “Bring it on, asshole! I’ll have you in cuffs before you can lift a finger, and then you can spend your days camwhoring from the comfort of your own prison cell.”

“Hah,” Gintoki says, because really, from where does this unmitigated prick dredge up the gall to say that kind of thing to him?

Though he has to admit that somewhere in the back of his mind, the little warning bells are getting louder. Are these the kind of things a man who’s just been caught red-handed would be saying? Hijikata’s not trying to justify himself or tell Gintoki that his reputation is already about as shitty as it can get without his help – he just seems to be accusing Gintoki of the very crimes he himself is guilty of.

_It’s almost as if... as if...._

“Hah,” he says again – though this time it’s with slightly less conviction. “Why would I need to camwhore when I’ll soon be taking you for everything you’ve got, Hijikata-kun? You better start hosing the man stains off the walls, because I’ll be getting your filthy compound of unsubtle homoeroticism in the settlement, along with anything else that’s not nailed down. What’s that guy’s name? Jimmyzaki? I’ll take him too.”

Hijikata sputters, a look of disbelief entering his eyes. “You want Yamazaki? Is _that_ what this is about? Fine, take him! _You_ can deal with him skiving off work to make cow-eyes at your robot and trying to expense account anpan. Anything else you’re going to have to deal with on your own – as if you haven’t got enough money from your disgusting sideline!”

Gintoki frowns. He can’t help but think this whole conversation has gone wildly off-track. What is this idiot not getting? Is this the kind of obliviousness that goes hand in hand with being a class traitor for the Bakufu?

“ _Of course I don’t want Yamazaki,_ ” he says, hauling Hijikata in closer so he can hiss the words directly into his face. He’s about to elaborate on that thought when a strange sound – almost like a slowly growing murmur of appreciation – filters its way into his ears. Gintoki glances over his shoulder, and –

_Oh, right. Them._

He’d forgotten about the captive audience they’d been collecting while they bawled at each other in the middle of a busy Edo street. Should he be flattered or insulted at the sheer number of goggling eyes? And –

_Oh. Shit._

It suddenly occurs to him that for all his talk of how disgusted he is and how he would literally never stoop to the kind of behaviour depicted in the DVDs in real life, he and Hijikata are basically doing a live re-enactment of one of those offensive things right now for the gathered citizens. 

Okay. This situation has now gotten out of hand, officially. And as galling as it is, he realises he may actually have to have an actual _conversation_ with Hijikata to figure out what’s going on here. Because somehow, Hijikata is _not_ getting what he’s saying and in fact – somehow – seems to think that _he’s_ responsible for this garbage.

Of course, Hijikata _could_ be lying through his teeth... but Gintoki knows, as much as he hates to admit it, that that’s just not his style. 

So, conversation it is. Damn it. 

Now he just has to somehow get out of this fight without looking like he’s backing down. Surely, someone’s got to come along and break this up. They’re an impediment to foot traffic! Where the hell are the police when you need them?!

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots an elderly couple huddling together at the edge of the crowd, squinting confusedly at the ruckus before them. They’re clearly people of substance – revered members of the community who won’t stand for this kind of thing going on in their neighbourhood! They’ll put a stop to this, and then Gintoki can back off under the guise of actually giving a shit about what they have to say.

The old man raises one wizened hand – the universal sign of an imminent sage pronouncement from a respected elder – and the crowd quietens in anticipation.

_Yes! Thank you, Elder!_

Peace will be restored. Sanity will prevail. The citizens of Edo will disperse, and he and this idiot can sort things out privately between them –

“This is even better than _Shinsengumi versus Yorozuya VII: Bitchfight at the Bathhouse_.”

His little old wife nods in enthusiastic agreement, and a cold, visceral horror runs right down through Gintoki’s gut, settling in the general vicinity of his ass. He flails wildly for some kind of rebuttal, but his usual characteristic wit has apparently wandered off for a stroll, along with any hope of salvaging this situation with his not inconsiderable dignity intact.

 _Besides, that’s not even what it’s called! It’s_ Slapdown at Senboukyou _, dammit, get it right – call yourself a fanboy, you old coot –_

Hijikata sputters helplessly, his eyes wide. Hard to miss, really, given how close their faces are – and crap, why does that suddenly feel like such a damning indictment? They’re fighting! Of course they’re getting up close and personal! Do these vultures expect them to resolve their differences by yelling at each other from opposite ends of Edo? Or maybe the Shinsengumi can use their ill-gotten tax dollars to invest in a fleet of carrier pigeons, and he and Hijikata can spend their days writing tiny letters to each other, instead of just having it out like men the way the gods intended.

Hijikata grapples with him, but it’s ineffective – his moves are sloppy, his expression wild, his teeth grinding around a non-existent cigarette. Gintoki understands exactly how the mayo freak feels right now, and that, perhaps, is the worst thing about any of this. To develop empathy at this advanced (but still spry and youthful) stage of his life – and towards a guy who probably makes sweet love to his precious Shinsengumi Code every night on a gently rolling sea of mayonnaise while thinking dirty, flirty thoughts of making everyone within a ten-mile radius commit simultaneous seppuku, no less – he’d rather die.

All of Gintoki’s relative relaxation from only moments earlier is gone, replaced by a full-body tension that extends down into his fingers where they’re tangled in Hijikata’s collar. They tighten reflexively, and Hijikata stumbles closer – _too_ close, his eyes blazing with fury and confusion, as well as something else that Gintoki refuses to identify. 

Wait, no – he _can’t_ identify it. To say that he _refuses_ to identify it would imply that he knows what it is, and that is absolutely, one hundred per cent not true. It is simply the ineffability that is Hijikata that he’s seeing, rather than some sort of crazed, bewildered, red-hot animal lust –

He realises, on some level, that an awed hush has fallen across the square. He tears his eyes away from Hijikata – from the way that he’s trying to blink dust and sweat from his eyes, from the way his chest heaves with exertion – and drags his gaze sideways to see a veritable wall of mobile phones, all pointing at the two of them. Their audience watches, rapt, and Gintoki finds his hands loosening once more as he realises exactly what’s going on. Oh, shit – _shit, shit, shit,_ they’re making it _worse_ , they have to stop fighting _right now_ before this degenerate horde twists a perfectly innocent and manly bout of fisticuffs into something perverted –

The back of his head strikes the wall with a _crack_ that seems to ricochet around the inside of his skull, and he’s too dazed for a moment to realise what’s happened. His mind catches up soon enough, though, when he hears the crowd hooting and cheering, and – what the _fuck_ , this unbelievable asshole just took advantage of his loosened grip to slam him against the freaking _wall_.

He groans, with a pain that transcends the physical and comes out somewhere around the existential. Not only are sales for this bullshit going to be through the roof – without him seeing a single yen for his efforts, even – but, more to the point, everyone’s going to see him getting all dominated by the frigging _Shinsengumi_. That’s fantastic. That’s just what he needs. Try to help someone out of a sticky situation, and he pays you back by taking advantage of your kindly nature and making you look like some jerk who can’t even hold his own against a guy who’s wearing both a vest and a cravat.

“Listen, idiot,” he hisses, wondering whether delivering a swift knee to Hijikata’s balls would improve the situation. It’d certainly improve his own mental wellbeing, anyway. “We have to stop this!”

“Like hell!” Hijikata slams him against the wall again for good measure, and Gintoki has to refrain from shoving him down to the ground. Tempting as it is, it’d only inflame the situation, especially since the gawking citizens are now so close to the action that any strike against Hijikata would probably end up taking a few of them out as well. And the whole thing would be caught on dozens of cameras. Not that destroying video footage ever seems to have done any lasting harm to Hijikata’s career – insofar as sucking up tax dollars and being a blight on the face of humanity can be considered a ‘career’ – on any of the many, many occasions it’s happened, but still, it’s not a risk he wants to take.

Since calling Hijikata an idiot didn’t work, Gintoki decides to resort to Plan B, which involves calling Hijikata an idiot, but more loudly and belligerently than the first time. Before he can open his mouth, however, a piercingly nasal voice cuts through the hubbub. 

“This is a cease and desist! You are hereby ordered to halt in your actions, or face the legal consequences!”

Gintoki has barely had time to register the words before a piece of paper is thrust in front of his face, obscuring his view of Hijikata’s enraged expression.

_What the hell?_

He tries to focus on whatever the shit this piece of paper waving around in front of him is, but it’s hard when it’s literally a millimetre in front of his nose. He snatches the paper out of the hand of whatever annoying idiot’s jamming it in his face and holds it at a more readable distance.

_blah blah blah cease and desist blah blah blah blah my client Terakado Tsuu has sole rights to provide publicity blah blah blah if you continue to persist whatever whatever forced to take legal action blah blah blah_

Oh. It’s one of _those_. This is the third – fourth? – cease and desist he’s received this week. Like he’s supposed to keep track! They’re all the same – harping on about how he should stop doing various junk or else they’re going to arrest him and take his stuff. Joke’s on them – he doesn’t have any stuff worth taking. Though if they took Kagura off his hands, that might be an upside. 

He glances over at the lawyer, but having apparently discharged his duty regarding the cease and desist, he’s now yelling at the passersby to delete any unauthorised content from their phones. 

What the hell does this nerd lawyer expect him to do about any of this? Are he and Hijikata not allowed to have arguments now? Do they have to settle their differences like reasonable adults, or else face legal consequences? Screw that!

Ugh, today just gets more and more shitty every time he blinks. He can deal with the other bullshit, but taking away his God-given right to vent his frustrations on the nearest attractive target – _attractive_ as in the guy regularly attracts Gintoki’s fists to his face – well, that’s just taking it too far.

Speaking of – said fist-target has his own copy of the C&D and is now reading it with a baffled expression that’d be funny, at literally any other time. The guy looks completely perplexed, and it’s enough to snap Gintoki’s mind back to the actual issue at hand. 

Surely Hijikata wouldn’t be acting like this if he were the perpetrator? Now that he thinks about it, they’ve both presumably been issued with the same orders, which means that not only is Hijikata not responsible for this shitshow, but he’s also just as deep in the shit as Gintoki is. This somehow seems both better and worse than the alternative.

Better, because – as much as he hates to admit it – he’s relieved that Hijikata isn’t _that_ much of a jackoff. Even though Gintoki can barely stand the guy, he’s someone he thinks he can trust. Mostly. On the life-and-death stuff, anyway – and isn’t that what’s really important?

Worse, because how the hell is he going to go up against whatever megacorporation is producing this nonsense? They have _lawyers_ , for crying out loud – and celebrities, which is even worse. What can he do in this situation? Is there a lawyer out there who needs their roof re-tiled, or whose cat is stuck up a tree? Because those are the only payment methods he has on hand besides selling his body, and selling his body in order to fund a legal attack on someone _else_ for illegally selling his body seems like the kind of thing that could backfire somehow.

He can only hope that Hijikata will have better luck. Surely the Shinsengumi have the finest lawyers on call, right? Nobody could possibly leave such a trail of property damage and destroyed cameras in their wake without having someone around to clean up all their messes for them. Maybe having your fingers in the government purse isn’t such a bad thing.

He steals a glance at Hijikata – he’s re-reading the C&D in quiet consternation, one hand clutching the paper in a death grip while the other massages one of his temples. He doesn’t look like a criminal mastermind of the creepy sex offender variety right now, although looks can be deceiving. Mostly, he just looks tired and pissed off.

Really, they’d be better off working together on this. They should pool their resources – it’s possible that they’ve both been wronged, after all – and come together for their mutual benefit. They might yet get out of this with their reputations, wallets, and mutual not-quite-enmity intact.

That’s it. He’s going to swallow his pride, and ask the Shinsengumi for succour in his time of need. He can do this.

He opens his mouth.

“Oi, Hijikata-kun. Hope you enjoyed your free sample, ‘cause that’s the last time you’re getting your hands on these.” He jerks his thumbs in the general direction of his pecs, even as his brain screams at him, demanding to know what the hell he’s doing. “Anything else you want to say or do to me, send it through my lawyer.”

_What the fuck?!_

Hijikata is sputtering wordlessly, and honestly, Gintoki can’t say he blames him. _He’s_ sputtering wordlessly at himself, deep down in the part of his brain that is apparently functioning. What the hell is wrong with him? Has he been possessed? Is he going to have to combine a possession arc with a weird sexual harassment/legal drama storyline? Not that he’s not capable of such depth and nuance, but sheesh, it’s such a _pain_. And it’s not like he’s even getting paid anything extra.

The crowd are still watching them – from a distance, with (most) phones tucked away, but definitely still there. Ah, shit. This would be so much easier if the two of them were shitfaced in some dingy bar somewhere, rather than performing for the masses like a couple of circus animals.

But even so. He has to put things right. He has to get access to that sweet, sweet Shinsengumi lawyer fund, and maybe not completely destroy the tenuous not-quite-loathing he has going with Hijikata in the process.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Smiles, nice and friendly-like. He can do this.

“Okay, I’m off to collect evidence against you. See you in court, Vice-Commander.”

_... Well, shit._

He turns on his heel with great confidence – because he meant to say that, clearly – and strides off, the crowd parting for him with a confused murmur.

Behind him, he can hear the infuriated _See you in hell, Yorozuya!_ that echoes back in response, and he can’t even be mad, because at this point he pretty much deserves it.

What the hell is wrong with him today? Put him in a few homoerotic almost-sex tapes and distribute them around the place, and suddenly he loses all control of his mouth. Normally when he says dumb shit, he at least means it. 

Well. Most of the time, anyway.

He sighs, trying to wipe the dust and dirt from his sweaty yukata, but instead he just embeds it further into the cloth. He doesn’t even know where he’s going. In this moment, he feels like nothing but a tumbleweed on the winds of life. He apparently isn’t even in charge of his own actions anymore – and worse still, he has no idea whom to even _begin_ to blame. 

He pauses, sighing again, only more deeply. He can’t go home – Catherine and Otose will just be giving him that _look_ , and there’s a chance Shinpachi will be there, and he’s not certain he’ll ever be able to look him in the eye again. Gintoki supposes it must be a tenet of Shinpachi’s unhealthily obsessive Otsuu fanclub that they _have_ to buy everything she promotes, so no wonder he flipped his lid yesterday. He must have justifiably felt ripped off, since he’s been getting the live show for free every week for the past... how many years has he known Hijikata now? Too many, that’s for sure. Any number above ‘zero’ would be too many.

Gintoki stops, despair filling him. Great, so along with everything else, he’s also been rendered effectively homeless. What a shitty day. 

What he has to do is find out who’s responsible for this, pound them into the dirt, and take back what’s his. He’s just lost whatever chance he had of getting Hijikata’s help with this by running his dumbass mouth, so he’s just going to have to figure stuff out on his own. He _hopes_ Hijikata has managed to get it through his thick skull that Gintoki’s not the one responsible for these travesties, given he was served with the exact same cease and desist. Being able to put two and two together _should_ be some kind of entry requirement for the police, Gintoki thinks, but really, he’s seen very little evidence of that.

Pausing, he looks down again at the cease and desist, and, for sheer lack of anything better to do, begins re-reading it. 

_Blah blah my client Terakado Tsuu has sole rights to provide publicity for_ Shinsengumi versus Yorozuya _, a product of PDH Industries...._

Gintoki pauses, narrowing his eyes. _PDH Industries_.

Well. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Since he’s not a giant nerd, he has no idea how to go about looking up what this company is and who the hell is running it, and they’ve obviously chosen to hide like cowards behind lawyers rather than confronting him directly. Something tells him his usual strategy of going and asking around the docks and back alleys until he coincidentally stumbles upon something useful isn’t going to cut it when it comes to this. The most he’ll probably get out of the good citizens of Edo today are some lewd hoots or some even more lewd questions about his opinion of Hijikata’s ass. Not that he has one.

Scratching his head, he looks up – directly at a sign reading ‘Internet Teahouse’. Gintoki grimaces slightly – nothing good has ever happened to him in that place; however, he also knows that if he wants nerds who’ll be only too happy to answer seemingly pointless questions, the internet is exactly where he’ll find them. Maybe he can find some kind of message board for people who’ve been made to look like, given half the chance, they’d shove their idiotic six-point-five (as if he can’t do better!) nemesis against a wall and give them a good hard tonsil inspection... and _ugh_ , that is _not_ an image he needed in his mind at _all_.

Shuddering, Gintoki turns on his heel and strides off towards the internet teahouse. 

_Someone_ is going to pay for this. He just has to find out who.


	4. Chapter 4

Gintoki isn’t sure when time ceased to have any meaning, though he supposes if time has ceased to have any meaning, then it’s a moot point anyway. Maybe he has always been here, a shell of a man in front of a computer, his finger fused to the mouse button in front of him and his ass fused to the tatami below. 

It’s hard to pick out one singular regret from the ocean of regrets his life has abruptly become. If he thinks about it – _really_ thinks about it – Gintoki is pretty certain there’d been a time before he came into this hellhole of an internet teahouse, if only because he can delineate to a fairly specific degree a time _before_ he knew about what actually happens on the internet and a time _after_ his eyes had been horribly, brutally opened. 

It seems outrageous to him that the internet is legally allowed to exist and that apparently people are allowed to put whatever they want on it. Like this picture that he’s looking at now. It’s like some sort of lovingly rendered trainwreck that he can’t tear his eyes away from, and instead of helping the maimed passengers crawl out the windows or grabbing a bucket of water to put out the fire, he’s throwing piles of combustible rubbish on the flames instead. Or something. He’s not in a state to be crafting overly deep metaphors at this particular moment. 

It’s not even like he _absolutely_ objects to this kind of thing. He gets it! He totally gets it! People have to do _something_ with their spare time after all, and honestly, they could do worse than imagining him in the buff. And if they want to draw a picture of that, then really, who is he to discourage them? 

But why, in the name of everything sacred, would anyone want to imagine him getting it on with – with – he can’t even think the name, it’s too awful. Sure, the combined power of a six-point-five and a nine-point-five – his innate modesty prevents him from telling the truth, which is that he’s an obvious ten – averages out to a very respectable eight overall, which is pretty good, but it’s obvious that he’s doing all the heavy lifting. Both figuratively _and_ literally in this current illustration he’s been staring at for a good five minutes now. _Who_ would do it on a kitchen bench? That can’t be comfortable. And honestly, the amount of work involved in this does _not_ seem like it would be worth it. Clearing away the rice cooker, dumping the dirty dishes in the sink, chucking out the empty sukonbu boxes – not to mention whatever clean-up they’ll have to do afterwards. And do these people not realise the shitfit Shinpachi would pitch if he knew about this? Because Shinpachi would definitely pitch the mother of all shitfits if he came over the morning after to find Hijikata’s assprints all over the place. No, there’s no way Gintoki would allow this to happen. 

_Not_ because of the assprints reason, but because he’d never fuck Hijikata in the first place. In what kind of twisted universe would he do that? Gintoki shakes his head, snorting derisively. Other than the universe contained entirely within the realm of this computer screen, none of this would ever happen. The assprints are only one of a million reasons why not – reasons one through 999,999 are that he would never, ever fuck Hijikata, no matter how tempting the kitchen bench suddenly looked. And no matter how, according to this picture, Hijikata turns red as a tomato when he’s turned on, which is honestly pretty funny.

Yeah. Funny. That’s the word he wants. 

No, this is clearly a terrible slander against his character for all sorts of reasons, and it’s going straight into his evidence folder. Which is already pretty full, but Gintoki figures that the more evidence he has, the better. He’s not going to risk whoever’s responsible for this getting off the hook because he was negligent in presenting the full extent of the outrages perpetrated against him. Because they _are_ outrages, for all sorts of reasons. For example, none of these images have adequately captured Hijikata’s resting bitch face at all – not that he’s _resting_ in any of these pictures, he supposes. 

He doesn’t realise he’s furiously muttering out loud to himself until someone on the other side of the screen from him suddenly calls out, “Hey, idiot! Keep it down!”

“Sorry,” he calls back, though he doesn’t mean it in the slightest. If this guy had just seen what Gintoki had seen, the _least_ he’d be doing is muttering a few expletives to himself. No, all things considered, Gin-san has been remarkably calm throughout all of this. 

He slugs back a warm mouthful of day-old strawberry milk for sustenance and resumes his quest.

Hmm. _The Dream of the Yorozuya’s Husband._ He clicks on it – the younger generations have to be encouraged in their appreciation of fine art, after all, even if their re-interpretations leave something to be desired.

He feels oddly offended that Hijikata apparently dreams about gallivanting off with some slutty cephalopod. Is Gin-san not good enough anymore? Is this because the kitchen bench is now verboten? Did Shinpachi yell at them so hard that neither of them felt like returning to the scene of the crime? Was Hijikata more into the pink frilly apron than Gintoki had realised?

And why does he even _care_ if some fictional version of Hijikata wants to run off with an octopus? Hell, he should be happy for him – he’ll send them a blender as a wedding present, if it comes to that. And then he can use it to make takoyaki when the new-relationship shine wears off and Hijikata inevitably comes crawling back to him.

Nevertheless, the image is duly saved. Octopus or not, it’s still evidence. How’s he going to sue for defamation if he doesn’t know all the permutations and combinations in which he’s been defamed? If he could afford a legal secretary, he’d have them doing this... but he clearly can’t, and there’s no way he wants Kagura or Shinpachi going through all this and giving him lewd comments or disapproving looks, so it’s down to him. After all, without copious amounts of evidence, he’ll never be able to consolidate his claims to half – no, three-quarters – wait, nine-eighths – of the profits, plus Yamazaki. Who knows how much more evidence he’s going to need? He could be here all month.

All right, back to scrolling. 

Now that the excitement’s died down, he feels himself starting to... drift a little. Sleep deprivation and general malnutrition are clearly catching up with him; while he’s not unconscious, he’s definitely not fully conscious either. He’s entered a higher plane, where it’s just him, his scroll finger, and the weird boner that seems to have sprung into existence out of some inexplicable self-defence mechanism. His body is reacting to all the dicks it’s seeing on some instinctive level. It’s either get a boner or go crazy. Those are his options. He might not like it, but at this point, there’s not a lot he can do about it. 

He’s _sure_ that’s it. It’s not really even a proper boner – it’s just _there_ , sitting senselessly in his pants like an extra appendix or something. It’s useless. It’s meaningless. _Obviously._

Time passes. Day turns to night. Aeons come and go. He sees so much dick that it ceases to have any meaning. When will it be enough?

A sudden series of electronic dings is enough to jolt his sluggish mind back into reality, if barely.

_Huh? What – ?_

Oh. Even if the screen name weren’t a dead giveaway, there’s only one person in this day and age who still sends instant messages via EIM.

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** I see you have joined the capitalist classes now. I’m disappointed in you, Gintoki._

Gintoki grits his teeth and stares harder at the part of the screen that isn’t currently occupied by Zura’s latest attempt to recruit him. It means that he has to stare at Hijikata’s o-face instead, but if that’s the price he has to pay, then so be it.

 _... Wait. When did_ I _get EIM? How’s he even messaging me? How do I turn this damn computer’s sound off?_

As much as he’d like to hope that Katsura would understand that his silence equals a lack of desire to talk to him, he knows that it’s a forlorn hope. Katsura’s never-say-die attitude may have been an advantage on the battlefield, but it’s really fucking annoying at literally any other time. He’s trying to do legal research, for crying out loud! Is nothing sacred?

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** I could almost forgive you amassing your fortune, if not for the fact that you’re doing so in cahoots with those Bakufu dogs._

The nearby clacking of keys stops and starts in a way that’s remarkably suspicious.

Gintoki drags his eyes away from the screen for a moment and blinks painfully as he attempts to focus on anything that isn’t mere inches in front of him. Turning his head with an audible creak, he sweeps his gaze across the room. And – there. Across the aisle and two booths down, he spots the top of a head that he’d recognise anywhere. The giant duck-thing is also something of a giveaway.

His face twitches.

The keys clack.

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** I thought we taught you better than that._

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** We can help you, Gintoki._

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** Join the Jouishishi and purge yourself of your impurities, along with the country!_

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** Rid yourself of your filthy urges and fight to restore Edo to its rightful state!_

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** If you cannot bring yourself to stop getting jiggy with the enemy, then a substantial cash donation will also suffice. You can make out the cheque to Katsura Kotarou of the Jouishishi. Eight figures would be a sufficient initial investment. We can work out an ongoing payment plan later._

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** Think of how much you could claim back on tax! It would be a double blow to the Bakufu scum! You would screw them over in both the literal and metaphorical sense!_

It’s impressive, how hard he can throw a half-empty carton of strawberry milk when he really wants to. He’s sad to see it go, but the indignant squawk from two booths down makes it worthwhile.

... Wait, no, it’s not worthwhile at all. That strawberry milk was the only thing keeping him alive! Screw Katsura! No, wait – don’t screw Katsura. He’s had enough of screwing his acquaintances, especially since he’s not actually screwing any of them. None of the fun, and all of the regret.

Well, this is how he’s going to die – starving, sticky, and semi-erect in an internet teahouse. He’d like to say that it’s a surprise, but impending death lends a man a certain clarity, and he can admit to himself that it was always going to be this way. Hell, he’s not even that upset. He just wishes it were Ketsuno Ana’s creamy thighs he were staring at during his last moments of existence, rather than those of the apparently very tsundere Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi.

“Gin-san?”

Are hallucinations a sign of imminent death? If so, then why is he hallucinating Shinpachi, of all the people? This is just weird and awkward. Gin-san is not at his best right now.

“Gin-san, when did you last eat? Gin-san? GIN-SAN!”

_Enough already! Let me and my hard-on die in peace!_

He bats feebly in the general direction of Shinpachi’s voice, but is met with an iron grip around his wrist.

A small hand starts shovelling something into his mouth, and he gags as the sour taste of sukonbu assaults his tongue. He tries to spit, but now the hands are clamped around his jaw, forcing him to chew, an unstoppable force meeting a pretty damn moveable object. Breakable, too, and he has no doubt that Kagura – because it has to be Kagura, Shinpachi doesn’t have the sheer balls for this kind of move – _will_ break his jaw if that’s what it takes to get him to bend to her whims. So he submits and swallows the godawful stuff down with only minimal retching. 

“Gin-chan! You’ve got to eat!”

As much as he hates to admit it, it does seem to be having an effect – he can actually focus his eyes enough to see the next fistful of sukonbu rocketing towards his face. He dodges – mostly – and looks up to see Shinpachi staring at him with that half-worried, half-disapproving-grandma look that is such a staple in his repertoire. He should get a new shtick, really.

Gintoki opens his mouth to say something – what, he’s not sure, but something will come to him – when he notices Shinpachi’s eyes darting to the side. It’s only the most momentary of glances before he cringes away again, but it’s enough to rouse Gintoki’s suspicions.

What’s got Pattsuan so worked up? Gintoki slides his sore eyeballs in the direction Shinpachi was looking, and... oh. Right. The computer screen.

_That._

He doesn’t know where to look. Looking at Shinpachi is not an option. Looking at the screen... hmm, better or worse? He could just pretend that this is all absolutely normal, and they’re the ones who’re out of line. It’s his private computer time, after all. And he’s got a legal case to pursue!

Luckily – for certain definitions of luck – Kagura takes the dilemma out of his hands.

“Whoa! I didn’t realise Toushi was so flexible.” She tilts her head as she tries to take in everything she’s seeing, obviously attempting to work out what goes where.

 _It’s no use, Kagura. There’s too many limbs. You’ll never make sense of it._

Kagura rapidly flicks through his saved files, alternately making appreciative and disgusted noises, while Shinpachi sputters helplessly and keeps his eyes locked firmly on the floor in front of him. 

“Gin-san, we... we brought you some food.”

Shinpachi is still studying the tatami with great interest, and Gintoki honestly feels bad for him. To have thought that he might finally earn some money, and to instead have to come and witness... _this_... well, it must be a bit of a let-down. And okay, life is a series of let-downs and Shinpachi should get used to it, but this seems like a pretty harsh way to learn this particular lesson.

“You should use your money to buy Toushi some clothes, Gin-chan.” Kagura is zooming in on a particularly inappropriate part of a particularly inappropriate picture, and – wait, there’s a zoom? “You’re always tearing them up. His buttons are all over the place!”

_Oh, for the love of –_

“I’m not – he’s not – we’re not – it’s not –”

_Well, you sure showed her._

He gives up with a sigh and looks back at the screen. It’s better than looking at the waves of sheer, intense, highly personal _disappointment_ that are radiating from the very core of Shinpachi’s being. Contrary to popular belief, he doesn’t actually enjoy disappointing either of them. Not unless he’s deliberately trying to be an asshole, which he isn’t in this instance.

Kagura is still flicking through the images, too fast for him to follow, and so he just looks at what his eyes _can_ focus on.

An ad for those damn DVDs has popped up again in the corner of the screen, featuring Otsuu winsomely wagging her finger at him and saying she’ll **** whoever doesn’t buy them’s uncle in the ***. 

Gintoki stares at her, listless. Would he even want that now? Is he even capable of getting off to normal, wholesome things anymore? It’s worth a shot, he supposes.

“Shinpachi,” he mumbles, watching as Otsuu’s finger waves back and forth. “You see me as an uncle figure, right?”

There is silence, before Shinpachi mutters, “In that you’re old, kind of creepy, and no one wants you at the Christmas party but they’re too polite to tell you? Sure.”

Gintoki slumps down with a sigh, rubbing tiredly at his face. He may or may not let out a tortured moan.

Where did it all go wrong? What the hell happened to Gin-san, the loveable rogue? Gin-san, who could charm the kimono off any lady he wanted, should he actually choose to do so? Gin-san, who just a few days ago was attracting admiring glances from random passersby? Why is he now somewhere between that creepy lolicon of Takasugi’s and Yamazaki in the social hierarchy? 

“Gin-chan.” He feels a tug at his sleeve and then hears Kagura’s plaintive voice. “I’m worried, Gin-chan. Too much screen time is bad for you. Don’t you know the abyss also stares back?”

If only that were all the abyss was doing, he might be able to cope with it. As it is, the abyss is actively trying to ruin his life while simultaneously giving him the world’s most awkward boner, and he’s not impressed.

Well, he can’t get up and leave in this condition. That would be upsetting for all involved. He just has to stay here until his manhood calms its tits.

“Shinpachi. Kagura.” He forces a smile. Almost – _almost_ – looks them in the eye. “Thanks for the food.”

There must be something in his demeanour that gives away his intentions, because Shinpachi looks alarmed. Well, more so than usual.

“Gin-san –”

“Go, go,” he says breezily. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just finish up here, and then I’ll be on my way, yeah? I’ll see you all soon.”

He just has to find out whether the title _Yorozuya Dines Out on the Finest Shinsengumi Sausage_ is a literal representation of the story’s contents, and then he’ll be done. That’ll be a complete boner kill, right? Of course it will!

Shinpachi is clearly _not_ buying it, but Gintoki slaps at his ankle until he gets up and leaves out of sheer irritation. He suspects that Pattsuan’s departure has more to do with removing Kagura from the immediate vicinity of inappropriate material before it can warp her permanently than with Gintoki’s reassurances, but Gintoki’s pretty sure that ship has long since sailed. Hell, it’s probably on its third round-the-world voyage by now.

He has enough evidence now, right? He can leave once he’s unlocked the mystery of the Shinsengumi sausage, right?

Absolutely.

 

***

 

Hijikata is _not_ going to throw this laptop against the wall. He is _not_.

This is because he is a great believer in the power of restraint and self-discipline. It has nothing to do with the fact that the four previous laptops are now in a charred, smoking heap in the corner of the room, and he’s down to the last functional laptop in the Shinsengumi compound.

But whose fault is it that they keep showing him this sordid garbage, huh?! He keeps asking them to look up his name on the internet, and they keep coming up with the same godawful videos, so whose fault is it really that they end up hurled against the nearest handy surface? 

He eyes the last remaining laptop suspiciously. It stares back at him with a placidity that pisses him off.

“Bastard!”

His fingers stab at the keys as he enters his search terms into AnataTube. 

_vice-commander hijikata beats shit out of asshole yorozuya_

Clearly this should bring up any of the following, in order of most preferable to least preferable:

1) No results at all, because that idiot doesn’t figure into Shinsengumi business. Or he _shouldn’t_ , anyway.

2) Articles or videos about Hijikata beating the shit out of said idiot.

That’s it! There’s no option three!

And yet. Four traitorous Shinsengumi laptops have dared to be so patently _wrong_ as to bring up videos of that Yorozuya dipshit... not beating the hell out of Hijikata, precisely, but giving at least as good as he gets. Winning by the barest of margins purely through the power of selective editing, _obviously_. 

He shakily lights a cigarette as he hits the enter key, taking a drag as he waits for the search to return its results.

“Oh, son of a _bitch_.” He slams his fist down, making his coffee mug jump and slop half its contents out over the table. Hijikata stares in – not _impotent_ , but certainly ineffective – rage at the computer screen, which is showing him the exact same thing as its dead brethren in the corner, their electronic guts spilled out over the floor. For a moment, Hijikata is tempted to send it to join them but with effort restrains himself, sucking furiously on his cigarette as he stares at the collection of videos on the screen.

Clearly, this is not a problem with a defective laptop showing bullshit that ought not, in any sane world, to exist. Don’t people have jobs? Who are the – he checks the stats on one of the videos – the – the _1.1 million_ people?? – who have time to sit down and watch this shit, and then decide they like it so much they’re going to go out and spend their presumably limited yen on a DVD of the same thing? Does Hello Work know about this? 

Hijikata knows he’ll only end up regretting it, but still, it’s out of an honest desire to _understand_ that he clicks on one of the videos, pauses it before it can get too far, and then scrolls down to the comments section. 

_**[yorogumi510]:** That was so hott omg......ill be in my bunk_

_**[insertwittynamehere]:** i always new those two were doing it. i saw them fighting on the street one tiem. it was like they were fucking each other with they’re eyes._

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** How does this work?_

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** Esteemed citizens of Edo! Do you want to punch some Bakufu scum “IRL”? Join the Jouishishi!_

_**[FruitsPunchSamurai]:** Gintoki! Can you hear me? It’s not too late! Gintoki!!!_

_**[EroFights]:** Want fast ¥¥¥¥¥?? Think you know where Yorozuya and Shinsengumi will get down and dirty next??? Place your bets at www.erofights.com.eo _

_**[royal prince]:** Dear Friend, I hope this finds you well. My name is Mr Fhasjnebjas, and I am a prince of the Amanto. I write this with great sorrow, for my family are being held captive and I need ¥3000000 yen to earn their freedom. Could you please render your great assistance by [read more]_

_**[xxx_badminton4lyfe_xxx]:** my favourite bit was when the yorozuya beat the shit out of the Shinsengumi_

The cigarette meets a swift and painless end between his teeth, bitten in half through the power of sheer rage. He barely notices the lit end falling into his lap and smouldering away, only half-assedly brushing it aside once the smell of burning uniform starts to make itself known.

The hell is this bullshit?! Why are people fantasising about him having some sort of sex relationship with Yorozuya? Why does he feel like he knows half of the morons leaving replies? Why is there a comment that’s just a long line of pictures of eggplants?!

He’s pretty sure that he’s spontaneously developed high blood pressure at some point during the past five minutes. Does his medical insurance cover this sort of thing? He has a horrible feeling he never thought to add it in. Clearly, not thinking to include ‘hypertension induced by exposure to inane, slanderous’ – _Libellous? Which one is it? Fuck!_ – ‘and clearly illegal online content’ under the Shinsengumi healthcare plan was a massive fucking oversight on his part.

Whoever did this is going down. If his health is going to end up in the shitter, it’s going to be because of his own stupid actions, not because of some mysterious third party.

He squints at the name of the person who uploaded the perverted filth in the first place. It’s simply listed as PDH, which isn’t particularly useful, but there _is_ a link in the profile: pdh-industries.com.eo.

Well, he’s a cop, and this PDH Industries is clearly engaging in illegal business, so why the hell wouldn’t he click on it?

His leg bounces impatiently as he waits for the page to load. Sheesh, why is it taking so long?

After what seems like about five years, the page finally opens.

While Hijikata wouldn’t exactly call himself a design aficionado, he knows shitty graphics when he sees them... and these graphics are beyond shitty. It’s like if someone took one of the crappy DVD covers, photocopied it, cut out the text and moved it around a bit, photocopied it again, and then scanned the whole lot back in and shat it onto a popup-infested website. His eyes hurt just looking at it.

 _This_ is what’s supposedly raking in the cash? What the hell is wrong with people? What is it exactly that they’re even selling?

There’s a poorly aligned price list – red font on black, ugh – and he reads it as if in some sort of trance, unable to tear his eyes away.

_SUBSCRIBE NOW!!!! ONLY ¥6999 PER MONTH FOR ALL YOU COULD EVER WANT!!!!! FULL-LENGTH SUBSCRIBER-ONLY CONTENT!!!!!!!!_

_OR PAY AS YOU GO FOR EDITED HIGHLIGHTS, YOU CHEAPASS:_

_VANILLA SLAPFIGHTS........................................................................................................¥399_  
_LAME ‘INSULTS’....................................................................................................................¥499_  
_PRESSING FOREHEADS TOGETHER A LOT................................................................¥499_  
_ROLLING AROUND ON GROUND SCREAMING.........................................................¥599_  
_YELLING IN SAUNAS.............................................................................................................¥599_  
_YELLING IN CINEMAS..........................................................................................................¥599_  
_YELLING IN VARIOUS LOCALES (MEDLEY)................................................................ ¥699_  
_HARDCORE PUNCH-UPS...................................................................................................¥699_  
_SHIRT-GRABBING AND EYEFUCKING.........................................................................¥699_  
_TENDER DRUNKEN HOMOEROTIC MOMENTS.....................................................¥799_  
_THINGS THAT CAN TECHNICALLY BE CONSIDERED PUBLIC INDECENCY.......¥899_  
_LUCKY DIP!................................................................................................................................¥299_

Hijikata is digging his wallet out of his back pocket before he even really thinks about what he’s doing – look, he has to investigate this stuff if he wants to find out what’s going on, doesn’t he? And it’s not like he can’t expense account this kind of thing... though having said that, these are definitely _not_ the kind of receipts he wants to submit to the Shinsengumi’s accountants for reimbursement. Hijikata dithers for a moment, one hand in his pocket and the other on the keyboard, before deciding what the hell, he can eat the cost of a Lucky Dip in the name of finding out just what the fuck is going on here. 

Fine. Lucky Dip it is then, whatever that might entail. He clicks the link, enters his credit card details, lights a cigarette, and waits.

He narrows his eyes as all that appears on the screen is a dark, blurry shot of nothing. Did he get ripped off? That would just be the icing on the fucking cake – his life going to hell in a hand basket and now his hard-earned ¥299 wasted on a video of absolutely nothing.

He’s about to curse and close the window when the dark, blurry nothing on the screen suddenly moves, and then the lights of the Edo skyline come into frame. They move in and out of focus, swaying erratically, until whatever idiot is filming this suddenly rights themselves and finds the thing they’re actually trying to film.

 _Right. Good,_ Hijikata thinks, leaning forward, before quickly amending that thought to, _No. Fuck._ Not _good._

So not good, in fact, that it’s gone straight past _bad_ and landed smack-bang in the middle of _absolutely frigging appalling_. 

He grabs the laptop and yanks it up, holding it a good three inches away from his face and scanning the video footage desperately. Not that it’d make any difference, because he _knows_ what he’s looking at, and looking at it harder can only make it worse. He knows those shops, and he knows those signs. He knows them because he’s spent a countless number of nights stumbling past them at the end of his shift the evening before his day off. Sometimes by himself, more often with Kondou, but every now and then, he’s bumped into –

Hijikata resists the urge to start banging his head against the keyboard. Why? Why on this of all nights did the perverted stalker he’s apparently acquired have to show up with his mobile phone in one hand and the other presumably down the front of his pants? Because the thing that the camera is now focusing on is him and Yorozuya. But not _him_ and _Yorozuya_ as two separate, unrelated entities who happen to be in the vicinity of each other. No, it’s _him and Yorozuya,_ stumbling down the street together, practically entwined in each other’s arms – no – no, _not_ like that, just leaning on each other in the way men who’ve had one too many and who are now trying to make their way home do. If he looks close enough, he’ll be able to make out exactly where his hand is – it’s on Yorozuya’s elbow, right? Helping keep the idiot upright because, because –

Because the jackass’d helped himself to free top-shelf sake on Hijikata’s tab while Hijikata was out the back having a piss – he remembers this now, if only in the most hazy and disjointed way – and said jackass had been flat on his back by the time Hijikata had returned, having downed as much of the bottle as possible in the two minutes he’d been gone. There had been yelling, and then there had been dragging Yorozuya out the door by his legs, then puking, then assisted stumbling. 

That’s it. That was all that had happened. He _knows_ this. He’s done this dozens of times. Hell, he’s dragged Kondou out of there in a worse state after yet another rejection from Otae, so it’s not as if there’s anything untoward happening here. Anyone can see that!

“Hey. Hey, Hijikata-kun.” Yorozuya’s voice, emerging muffled from the shitty laptop speakers and slurred with drink, comes drifting to his ears. Even _that’s_ enough to make him grind his teeth with rage – how is it that Yorozuya can make the _kuuuuuuuun_ last longer than the whole rest of his name? How does he even do that? 

“Don’t talk to me right now.”

Hijikata, still staring at the screen, frowns. Does his voice always sound that raspy? The slurring he’s going to put down to his being obviously shitfaced, but God, maybe he needs to cut down on the smoking. Just... not right now. At some undefined future point. Maybe.

“Wow, rude,” the Yorozuya on the screen slurs, stumbling slightly. “Fine, I won’t tell you the really nice thing I was just about to say about you then. Whatever. If you’re going to be like that.”

Hijikata watches himself as he pulls up short, his head jerking up as if he’s surprised. “What nice thing?” 

“Nope, too late. You missed your chance when you decided to be rude.” The Yorozuya on the screen hiccups, swaying a little. “So I guess you’ll never know that you’re kind of all right when you’re drunk and you give the stick jammed up your arse the fifteen-minute break it’s legally entitled to.”

The Hijikata on the screen pauses, and there’s a moment of silence. “Shut the hell up.”

Okay, the Hijikata in the real world thinks, it wasn’t the best comeback, but it was still better than that shithead actually deserved. In a fair world, Yorozuya would have found himself dumped in the gutter by now, and Hijikata would be on his way home to his nice comfy futon, unencumbered by any amount of drunken asshole. Really, is it _completely_ necessary for Yorozuya to be leaning on him like that? 

“For the love of shit, Yorozuya, can you at least – _hic_ – try to stand up and walk? There’s no way in hell I’m dragging you all the way back to that dump you call an office.”

“Back to your place is it, then? My, my, officer, and without even dinner first.” 

Hijikata is pleased – for certain definitions of the word _pleased_ – to see he treats that particular remark with the silent contempt it deserves. Oh, but wait! It seems Yorozuya’s not done yet:

“Or we could just go back to mine. Baldy’s in town, and he’s got Kagura for the weekend, you know.” 

There’s no explanation for the cold sweat that suddenly breaks out over the entirety of Hijikata’s body as he watches as the him on the screen stumbles slightly, pauses, and then turns his head. 

“What?”

Hijikata gulps. He wants to look away, but he feels like his eyeballs are glued in place. He really ought to blink, but he’s not sure he can remember how. They’re standing so close together that the only thing between their faces is the thinnest sliver of orange light from the lanterns behind them – and then the Gintoki on the screen leans forward ever so slightly, and – 

**_SUBSCRIBER ONLY CONTENT!!!!!!!_ **

**_WANT TO SEE MORE??? SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR ONLY ¥6999 PER MONTH!!!_ **

Hijikata blinks, feeling like he’s been simultaneously slapped in the face and punched in the gut as the video freezes and that ugly red font starts flashing on the screen. The cigarette between his lips has long ago become nothing more than a cylinder of ash – he has absolutely no memory of having smoked any of it, but then that would require breathing, which is something else he has no memory of doing in the past two and half minutes either.

_What the... what the HELL?_

What the hell has he just seen? Hijikata stares wildly down at the computer screen, but the video’s not moving, leaving them stuck in a permanent limbo of almost-but-not-quite... mouth-touching, because hell if he’s going to call it the other word. This is _not_ what it looks like. 

“This is _not_ what it looks like.” Hijikata doesn’t especially mean to say the words out loud, but that’s what happens anyway. There’s no one here, though – who’s he trying to convince? Himself? Because he doesn’t need to do that. He is absolutely, positively... 99.9% sure that this is _not_ what it looks like.

He scrubs a hand over his face. He’d remember that, right? Surely, he’d remember that, no matter how drunk he’d been. If only because the next morning he would have needed to clean the taste of Yorozuya out of his mouth, probably with bleach or something, and along with every other inadequacy he’s now been made aware of, the Shinsengumi healthcare plan does not cover self-inflicted bleach burns. 

And he knows for an absolute _fact_ he has never, ever woken up at Yorozuya’s house, whether China was there or not. That just hasn’t happened. 

_So what the hell is this, then?_

Hijikata already knows what he’s going to do. He has to know – he cannot live without knowing what his extraordinarily stupid drunk self has done. If this video ends the way it looks like it’s going to end, then he owes whoever the hell PDH Industries is a _huge_ apology, because apparently he’s been off ruining his _own_ life behind his own back. Sure, Yorozuya was _helping_ in the life-ruining, but why hadn’t Hijikata just kicked the stupid drunken jackass into the gutter the moment he’d started going on about sticks up arses and China being out of town? 

Hijikata takes a deep breath. Counts to ten. Jams yet another cigarette into his mouth, before realising he’s forgotten to take the last one out. 

There’s really only one option here. It’s not like he can go to Yorozuya and ask him if he knows anything about this. He probably wouldn’t tell him even if he did, or else delight in implying all sorts of awful things without actually confirming or denying one way or another that anything actually happened. God, that is just classic fucking Yorozuya. Plus, the last time he saw Yorozuya, the idiot was screeching about lawyers and seeing him in court – which wouldn’t worry him anyway, but it worries him even less since he happens to know Yorozuya’s lawyer is going to be either Shinpachi or China or both in sunglasses and an ill-fitting suit. 

No. Whatever did or didn’t happen, Hijikata’s on his own here. 

Swallowing, he steels himself and prepares to say goodbye to ¥6999 per month.


	5. Chapter 5

There is, Gintoki thinks, some sort of limit on how long a boner can be safely maintained. Like, an actual medical limit. He knows this is true, because he remembers some point in the dim, dark past – back in the Before times, when he had yet to become one with the tatami in this godforsaken internet teahouse and could still wander about in the world like a regular human being – when his TV told him this was true. And his TV has never lied to him.

He’s a little hazy on the details, though. Maybe a flashback will help jog his memory. He’s practically blind from staring at this computer screen for what feels like a solid week anyway, so now’s as good a time as any.

_He’s in his apartment, watching some trashy documentary about dick-related medical mishaps._

_The presenter – some cute, perky little thing who is_ way _too enthusiastic about educating her audience on the topic of penile trauma – is interviewing a sour-faced doctor._

_“Priapism is serious business,” the doctor says, as the presenter’s head bobs up and down in an excited nod. “If left unattended, it can lead to gangrene –”_

Now he remembers why he doesn’t like flashbacks. Shit. He recalls now – only the tiniest bit too late, but far, far too late nonetheless – that that’d been the point when he’d tried and failed to change the channel, one hand clamped over his crotch in horror as the other one flailed desperately for the missing remote. Pity he can’t change the channel on his entire frigging life right now, because he’d do it in a heartbeat.

Even now, his crotch twinges in sympathy. That is... _not_ a fate that he particularly wants his dick to meet. The pictures had only flashed up on the screen briefly before he’d run from the room screaming, but they’d been seared into the darkest recesses of his brain nonetheless.

This is what he gets for watching a show called _Dick Disasters, Cock Calamities, and Todger Tragedies: Don’t Ignore the Things Your Penis Is Trying to Tell You, You Inconsiderate Jerk!!!_ – he’d just assumed it was hyperbole, and then... hoo boy. But there’s no way that something with that tacky of a name could be considered a legitimate source of medical information, right?!

It – it’s fine. He doesn’t actually have priapism, okay? That’s, like, an actual medical condition. What he’s dealing with is merely a fresh-faced, naïve hard-on that strayed onto the wrong path before it could properly be introduced to the good things in life and ended up imprinting on the first thing it saw. It’s blameless in all of this, and Gintoki’s going to gently but firmly educate it just as soon as he can peel himself up off the floor.

Or maybe he’ll just take Catherine up on her offer to punch him in the dick.

How many days has it been since he last saw the others? He’s not even sure. The bag of groceries that Shinpachi brought is mostly empty, so he can probably add another day or two onto the original tally. At this point, does it really matter?

He scrubs a sticky hand over his face, rubbing his eyes hard. Okay. He can do this. He’ll get up, go to the toilets, jerk off, and head out. Preferably in that order.

He reaches for the mouse before he can lose his nerve and hovers the pointer over the little _Disconnect Session_ button in the corner of the screen, pointedly ignoring the counter that tells him just how many yen this miserable little jaunt has cost him. Numbers that high don’t actually exist, so he can’t be expected to pay, right?

His finger twitches. The pointer starts to drift across the screen, away from the blissful release of the _Disconnect Session_ button and back towards the hellscape of self-loathing that has held him in its terrible pincers for the past however many days.

Did he save that last one? He just needs to double-check. That one was _really_ good. Evidence. Really good evidence. His whole case could hinge around the damage that could be done to his reputation if people were to see it.

_No! Be strong! Think of your dick! Do you want it to get gangrene? Don’t ignore the things it’s trying to tell you!_

... Oh. He’s already clicked back into the browser window.

Eh, a couple more minutes probably won’t make a difference. If he wins this lawsuit, then he’ll have enough money to buy himself a new dick if needs be. One with all the bells and whistles. He’ll program it to only respond to sensible things, like weather reports.

And maybe the gods of the internet have finally taken pity on him and staged a divine intervention, because there, in the ads sidebar, is a Ketsuno Ana interview. One he hasn’t seen before, even. It’s date-stamped with yesterday’s date – he thinks it’s yesterday’s date, anyway – and a sudden pang of guilt twists his stomach. It’s been _days_ since he last watched the weather forecast, and that, more than anything else – more than his dick potentially falling off – brings home to him just how far he has fallen.

 _Ketsuno Ana Interviews Thirty Entrepreneurs Under Thirty_ , the title reads, and _ye gods_ that sounds like something that would make him want to slam his own head repeatedly in a car door... but it’s Ketsuno Ana. He’s watched far worse for her sake. And really, if he’s going to be killed by his own dick in a public place, then he’d much rather they find his blissed-out corpse in front of an endless loop of boring-as-shit Ketsuno Ana reports than a single one of the... the very important pieces of evidence he’s been collecting.

And hey, maybe he won’t even die. Maybe gazing upon his beloved Ketsuno-san’s face will snap him out of whatever weirdness has possessed him over these past few days. He just needs to be reminded of what it is his dick really wants, and what his dick really wants is for a woman he barely knows to read the weather at him.

 _That’s normal, right? That’s the beginning of a long-lived and healthy relationship, right? The two of us have_ way _more in common than I do with Hijikata. I mean, she and I both care deeply about whether it’s going to rain or not. That’s something that I couldn’t share with anyone else, and certainly not with that Shinsengumi idiot. He’s so far up his own ass that the weather out in the real world has become meaningless to him. He has his own ass-based microclimate._

Yeah, he just needs to look at Ketsuno Ana, see her adorable smile, hear her sweet voice. Then he’ll be free to return to his usual magnificent self, to stride the streets of Edo with his head held high and his dick held low.

He clicks on the link, tapping his fingers against the mouse as he waits for the video to load.

_Come on, come onnnnnnn –_

Blessed relief – it’s Ketsuno-san, looking lovely as always. (Is that a new kimono? He doesn’t recognise it.) Her smile is as refreshing and serene as a spring breeze, her ability to nod along encouragingly with the most boring and self-absorbed of interview subjects still unparalleled.

Ahh, yes. This is good, this is nice, this is... the slow and painful deflation of his boner?

This is all wrong! He’d been planning on some sort of surreptitiously-coming-in-pants scenario, or at least retraining his hard-on to recognise good stimuli, but his junk is currently in the process of hoisting its white flag and beating a hasty retreat.

He stares desperately at her smiling face, at the gentle curves of her figure; he listens to her sweet voice and imagines it whispering the seven-day forecast in his ear.

And it’s all very... nice. He’s enjoying it. But he’s enjoying it in the way that a man enjoys accidentally being served tonkatsu when he ordered plain rice, or waking up of his own accord rather than having wakefulness forced upon him by a red-headed demon child jumping repeatedly on his stomach. 

His dick continues its journey towards tranquillity, and he supposes that he should be grateful that at least now it probably won’t rot and fall off. He takes a moment to wonder at the fact that penile gangrene probably wouldn’t even be the most traumatic thing that’s happened to his dick this year, but it _would_ be the grossest, and he just doesn’t have the stomach for that kind of shit these days. Gin-san’s getting on a bit; these things trouble him more than they once would have.

He ignores the voice in his head that tells him he doesn’t want a gangrenous cock because Hijikata might find it off-putting – clearly his dick has passed the Asshole Traitor Organ baton to his brain – and tries to distract himself with the realisation of just how badly he needs to piss. Sure, he’s barely had a thing to drink since his half-finished strawberry milk met its unhappy end, but still – chronic dehydration will only get him so far when it’s been this long between toilet breaks.

Relieve his heaving bladder, or keep watching Ketsuno-san? At one point, it would’ve been a no-brainer – he’s a samurai, he’s used to denying his own bodily needs for the greater good – but now....

This is the kind of thing that could cause a serious existential crisis. Shit.

He stares despairingly at the computer screen, hoping that it’ll do the hard work of making a decision for him. If this were the weather forecast, he’d take everything she said as an inviolable decree: a forecast of showers would be a clear directive to go and take a piss, while sunny skies would keep him glued to his seat until her segment was over.

But no, she’s just interviewing a group of highly punchable jerks, and he doesn’t know what message she’s trying to get across with that, beyond possibly telling him to go and take a dump on some rich tosser’s doorstep.

Speaking of punchable jerks... _wow,_ this guy she’s talking to right now is rubbing him up the wrong way. Oversized dark glasses, even though they’re indoors? Obnoxiously large rings on all his fingers? An air of casual disinterest while in the company of the greatest weather reporter Edo has ever known? A hoodie, in this weather? Is he actually _chewing gum?_

Ketsuno-san favours the jerk with a smile, and Gintoki feels the sudden and overwhelming compulsion to put his fist directly through the screen. Can punches be delivered via internet? Can he place an order online for someone to go back in time to yesterday and cave this douchebag’s face in while live on air? He could totally get behind it if the inventor of such a service made it to the top of some rich list or other.

“So, Mr S-san,” Ketsuno Ana says. “You’ve had a remarkable rise to the top – in fact, you weren’t even on our radar when we started planning this documentary a couple of months back. Quite frankly, it’s been nothing short of meteoric. What’s the secret to your success?”

The little jerkoff on the screen shrugs slightly. “Just lucky, I guess.”

God bless her, Ketsuno-san laughs lightly, as if he’s just made a delightful little joke. “Really now, Mr S-san, don’t be so modest about your hard work! What inspired you to start your empire?”

The kid pops his gum. “I was bored at work.”

Gintoki feels like he’s gargling on his own rage. God, this is disgusting. No one under the age of thirty should ever have more than 3,000 yen in their bank account. Anything above that should be forcefully confiscated and redistributed. Starting with this little asshole.

He stares furiously at the screen, wondering if anyone would really notice if he discreetly threw it across the room. But as he’s contemplating this, there’s something that catches in his mind about this little turd who apparently calls himself Mr S – between the giant sunglasses and the hoodie, he can’t see much of his face, but there’s something about the monotonous drawl and the arrogant way he’s slouching all over the couch that Gintoki thinks he recognises. As quickly as it comes, he dismisses the idea – no one Gintoki knows can even spell the word _entrepreneur_ , let alone be one. 

“Well, Mr S-san, for something you only started out of boredom, your PDH Industries – which is still privately held – is now estimated to be worth over 300,000,000 yen. What do you say about that?”

Gintoki takes a moment to indulge in his favourite pointless pastime – hear mention of a large amount of money, work out how many parfaits/JUMPs/blow-up dolls it’ll buy – before he is suddenly, rudely brought back to reality with a terrible realisation.

_Wait – hang on – shit –_

He scrabbles in his pockets even as his eyes stay glued to the screen. He watches as Mr S shrugs, practically radiating indifference; Ketsuno-san remains unfazed by the blatant disrespect, consummate professional that she is.

_Where is that goddamn –_

After a couple of false starts – a receipt for some 8-11 kara age, an extremely boring shopping list that Shinpachi had handed to him and which he’d promptly ignored – he finally fishes out the piece of paper he was searching for. It’s wadded up into a stained, slightly damp ball, and he peels it open impatiently but carefully, giving it his full attention lest he accidentally tear it to shreds.

Having succeeded at his task, he stares at the paper, eyes darting frantically back and forth as he tries to locate the pertinent information. Shit, who would’ve thought a legal document would have so much useless garbage in it?

Wait – there –

 _... sole rights to provide publicity for_ Shinsengumi versus Yorozuya _, a product of PDH Industries...._

Gintoki doesn’t know if it’s possible to choke to death on nothing but pure fury, but he thinks he’s about to find out.

That little pissant on the screen – _he’s_ the one responsible for the degenerate crapfest that is Gintoki’s life at present! _He’s_ the one who’s been selling Gin-san’s body to all comers! _He’s_ the one who tried to give his dick gangrene!

His fingers clench spasmodically around the now-mangled remains of the C&D letter, but he barely notices, all his attention directed once more towards the dead man on the screen. The little twerp is checking his Molex and saying something about having to leave in five minutes because he has somewhere better to be, which Gintoki absolutely doubts.

Ketsuno-san is unperturbed. “What do you plan to do with your newfound riches?”

“Dunno,” Mr S shrugs, and argh, how has no one murdered this jackass yet?!

Gintoki stares at the screen, trying to put the pieces together. He clicks insistently on the video, trying to get a better view of Mr S’s face, but all that happens is that the video keeps pausing and then playing again. Even yelling at the image to enhance does nothing. He’s about five seconds away from screaming in the purest frustration he’s ever felt.

The suspicion from earlier is scratching away at the edges of his consciousness, and it’s getting to the point where he can’t ignore it any longer. Could it really be – ?

“Mr S-san, thank you for your time today.” A pause. “Mr S-san?” Ketsuno-san coughs delicately. “Pardon me, Mr S-san?”

Something that sounds suspiciously like a snore echoes through the crappy computer speakers. Gintoki squints as he tries to make out the detail, and – there. The little fucker is clearly asleep behind his dark glasses, head lolling onto the back of the lounge.

He’s vaguely aware of a terrible cracking sound as the computer mouse is slowly crushed within his fist, but he barely pays it any heed.

There’s only one person Gintoki knows of who is both lazy enough and shitty enough to fall asleep mid-interview with Edo’s shining star of weather reporting and light journalism, and who has also shown an impressive dedication to ruining Hijikata’s life without the slightest concern for any poor saps who might end up as collateral damage.

On the screen, said life-ruiner yawns and stretches, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at his lips. He lifts his giant sunglasses _just_ high enough for Gintoki to get a decent look at his face. 

In the real world, plastic mouse fragments cut into Gintoki’s palm.

Sougo.

He _does_ scream now, uncaring of the nearby patrons’ startled jumps and threats to call the police. Yes! Call the fucking police! Save him the trouble of tracking them down for himself!

 _Fucking_ Sougo.

In hindsight, it’s the most fucking obvious thing in the world. Who else has the endless free time, the excuse to be in regular proximity to both Gintoki and Hijikata, the complete and utter lack of even the most basic morals? The Shinsengumi’s resident child emperor has been messing with them both and making a mint in the process, in what he probably regards as some kind of peripheral side benefit to massively fucking Hijikata over. 

Gintoki stands up. Somewhere in the back of his mind is the irritating knowledge that he probably owes Hijikata some kind of mild apology for all the shit he said to him. Well, Hijikata should be used to not getting apologies from him by now – at least as used as Gintoki himself is to not getting them from _him_ – so he’ll just have to take it as implied when Gintoki gets through with dealing with Okita. 

He ignores the yelling of the internet teahouse clerk behind him as he storms out the front door. Well, they can bill him later – right now, he has business to attend to. It doesn’t seem fair that he has to head back to the Shinsengumi compound twice in the same week, but he comforts himself with the thought that he wasn’t _entirely_ in the wrong the first time he went charging over there in search of an idiot policeman – he just had the wrong fucking one. 

 

***

 

How long has he been yelling? It must have been at least ten minutes by now. Some faceless Shinsengumi goon had stuck his head out the door around the two-minute mark, taken one look at him, and then closed the door again; other than that, he’s been left to his own devices.

Well, that’s fine. He can keep this up all day, or at least long enough to be really fucking annoying. He’s been told he has form in this area.

Pity he didn’t bring Shinpachi along – he could’ve just told the kid that someone on the other side of the wall slagged off his precious Otsuu-chan, and he would’ve screamed long and loud enough to bring the entirety of the Shinsengumi to their knees in surrender.

Time passes. The shouting continues. He’s at the point where he’s not really paying attention to what he’s yelling anymore – something about sister complexes and boys who spend too much time playing with their swords, which probably isn’t very nice, but fuck being nice at this point – and so it takes him a moment to realise that the door to the compound has, in fact, opened up again.

... Oh hey, it’s Kondou. Not who he was actually looking for, but not the worst option, either.

Kondou has his Concerned Big Brother face on, hands held up placatingly; strangely, it actually seems to work. Gintoki can feel himself calming down a little – enough, at least, that he stops bellowing obscenities and forces himself to take a few deep breaths. If anyone knows how to deal with that little skidmark, it’s Kondou. Gintoki doesn’t pretend to understand it – Kondou is, to put it kindly, as dumb as a box of rocks – but damn if he can’t keep Sougo in line when he wants to. And Gintoki can’t imagine that he’d be actively involved in helping to run Sougo’s godawful little franchise. No way.

“Hey, Yorozuya.” Kondou scratches at the back of his neck; his laugh is only a little forced. “What’s up? Sounds like you could use a friendly ear.”

How can the gorilla be so casual, when one of his men has been spending the last however many weeks violating poor Gin-san’s bodily autonomy? And Hijikata’s as well, he supposes, but if Kondou’s not going to discipline that sadist for attempting to murder his second-in-command on the regular, then Hijikata’s almost certainly shit out of luck when it comes to a little light sexploitation.

Now that he thinks about it, Gintoki realises he has absolutely no idea what to say. He was all prepared to lose his ever-loving shit at Sougo, but now that he’s face-to-face with Kondou instead, all the wind has gone out of his sails. It’d be like yelling at a puppy. One of those sad-eyed ones you see in calendars, who’ve been made to wear some ridiculous costume. He can’t do it. He can’t pile on the indignities like that.

Not to mention that the thought of actually discussing anything he’s witnessed over the past few days makes him queasy.

_Hey, Kondou-san! I’m here to beat your subordinate to a bloody pulp because he made some yelly porn of me and your best buddy, and now he’s rolling around in a giant pile of dosh because he’s worth more than the GDP of some countries. Also, I think my dick’s about to fall off._

Yeah, not gonna happen. Still, he has to do _something_. Maybe he can coax the little twerp’s location out of Kondou without Kondou realising it. 

“What’s up, you say?” He tries to affect an indifferent air; it’s probably not quite as dead-eyed as he would normally manage, but hopefully he’s at least not coming across as some kind of manic weirdo. “Eh, I dunno. Not much. Just this business with the DVDs, but, y’know, water under the bridge, right?”

“Huh? DVDs?”

Kondou seems genuinely mystified, which throws Gintoki for a loop – the guy’s the most painfully sincere person he’s ever met, so it would be strange for him to be faking confusion in order to cover up for his subordinate’s perversions. Then again, he’s also slower on the uptake than just about anyone Gintoki’s ever met, so maybe the cogs in his head are still creaking into place.

Gintoki shrugs. “You know. Those DVDs of Okita-kun’s. They’ve been causing me a few hassles, but I’ll get it sorted.” He straightens a little, schooling his expression into faux surprise. “Oh! Hey! You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you? It’d be great if I could just catch up with him, chat things over.”

Kondou blinks slowly. There is a silence that probably only lasts a couple of seconds, but which seems to roll into eternity.

“Eh? Oh – is this about when you were working at that video store last month? Did Sougo forget to return _120 Days of Blodom_ again?” He shakes his head, and – is that genuine regret? “I talked to him about this, and he promised to deal with it. My apologies, Yorozuya – I’ll get onto it right away –”

He’s still talking, but Gintoki isn’t hearing it. His eyelid twitches.

_He... he doesn’t know? About any of this? He hasn’t noticed that one of his officers has become a millionaire by shilling sex videos about one of his other officers? He thinks I’m talking about overdue video rentals?!_

This is... he doesn’t know what this is. Has he just stumbled across the one person in all of Edo who _doesn’t_ think that Gin-san’s opted for a radical career change? Is he in the presence of somebody who _won’t_ expect him to fork over non-existent money? Can he just move in with Kondou and spend the rest of his life with him, safely cocooned away from the – frankly horrible – outside world?

He still can’t quite believe that Kondou is _this_ oblivious to the obvious criminality going on right beneath his nose... but maybe he shouldn’t be even slightly surprised. What else can he expect from a guy whose idea of decluttering his junk probably involves removing his pants?

Kondou is still rambling on, now extolling the virtues of the Pedoro oeuvre – _like I need him to tell me that!_ – and Gintoki has no choice but to loudly talk over him until he shuts up.

“Yeah, I just need to get that weird sex DVD back off him,” he says with his winningest smile. “If you can just tell me where he is, then I’ll get out of your hair.”

He means it, too. If he never has to set foot within a mile of this place again, it’ll be too soon. Maybe he could find a cave somewhere and learn to enjoy the hermit life. It can’t be any worse than this, surely.

Kondou looks dubious, his innate desire to be helpful clearly at war with his actual duty to not give away the location of his men to people who come to his gate and scream obscene threats.

Time to pull out the big guns, then. He leans in close, beckoning Kondou to him.

“You know, our boss at the video store is preeeetty upset about the whole unreturned DVD thing,” he murmurs. “I wouldn’t care if it was just me, but he’s been pitching a fit at all three of us. That sister of Shinpachi’s is getting awfully stressed out about the whole thing. She doesn’t like to see her little brother’s sense of self-worth being eroded by an abusive manager.” He taps the side of his nose knowingly. “If I could just get Okita-kun to return that DVD, then all this would be dealt with, and Otae could rest easy knowing that the commander of the Shinsengumi had stepped in and helped her little brother when he needed it.”

Kondou brightens immediately, and Gintoki almost feels guilty. “Oh! Of course! But if it’s such an urgent matter, then I should go over there myself. Sougo wouldn’t question a direct order from his superior.”

This is clearly blatantly untrue – there’s at least one superior whom Sougo has never once obeyed in his life – but now is not the time for quibbles. “No, no, no, it’s fine. I appreciate the offer and all, but you should stay here with your men in case there’s trouble. I shouldn’t come running to the Shinsengumi with my own petty problems.”

“It’s no problem at all! I could –”

“I’ll make sure that Otae knows exactly who the brains behind the operation was.” He smiles conspiratorially. “Better for me to put in a good word for you, yeah?”

Kondou looks almost comically hopeful, and once again Gintoki has to shut off the part of his brain that houses his scruples – if Kondou wanted Otae to love him, he should have thought of that before he was born a gorilla. 

In any case, Kondou is scribbling something down on a piece of paper now, before passing it to Gintoki with a wink. Gintoki glances down at it: an address in the most fancy-arse part of Edo. He’s only ever been there on jobs, when some rich dickhead needed their gold bars polished and their regular help had been too busy assisting them in climbing out of their own arses to do it. 

“He said he thought he had detected Jouishishi activity in that house. He thinks the tycoon who owns it must be covertly funding their activities,” Kondou says, whispering. “Sougo’s been staking it out for three days. He’s been so diligent. I wanted to send Yamazaki, but he insisted on going himself.”

For a moment, Gintoki wonders what would happen if he told Kondou what Sougo has in fact been doing for the past three days, before deciding against it. Kondou probably wouldn’t believe him anyway, and to be honest, Gintoki wouldn’t want him to. The hint of fatherly pride in Kondou’s voice as he talks about Sougo’s supposed diligence is just too much. There’s got to be some place left in the world for unfathomably stupid optimism, right? 

As for the stakeout, Gintoki doesn’t believe for a second that this is what Sougo’s actually doing there – he’s probably at some disgusting orgy for the kind of people who appear on dreck like _Thirty Entrepreneurs Under Thirty_ and think they’re hot shit just because they’re young, good-looking, and in possession of untold wealth. Fuck those guys! What’s so good about them?!

Gintoki tucks the address into his yukata and turns away, waving vaguely in Kondou’s direction as the gorilla calls out, “Don’t forget to tell Otae-san!” It’s been a while since he crashed an orgy and ruined it for everyone. He’s almost looking forward to it.

 

***

 

It’s a bit of a hike to the address that Kondou gave him, but he doesn’t even care. He’s moved beyond things like hunger or exhaustion or the idea that there is a limit to his bladder’s capacity; he has attained a perfect state of being that is fuelled entirely by blind rage. It propels him onwards as he shifts from a walk to a run, scattering passers-by to the winds as he tears through the streets.

He makes good time, with only a few wrong turns along the way. His chest heaves mightily as he staggers to a halt, checking the address on the piece of paper.

Yep, this is the place. Although he could’ve guessed anyway, given the pillars and turrets and battlements and balconies this monstrosity of a mansion is apparently comprised of. It’s exactly the kind of tasteless hellscape that the kind of person who’d be friends with Sougo _would_ own. Nothing like the refined, classy type of mansion that Gin-san would purchase, had he the chance. No, this place looks like Roppongi Hills had sex with a medieval cathedral, and Gintoki won’t stand for it.

He doesn’t see Sougo anywhere around here, though, which figures. Gintoki’s just going to have to venture into the belly of the beast and drag the little jerk out to face the music. He marches up to the front door and presses the doorbell, hearing what sounds like a goddamned pipe organ echoing through the bowels of the architectural atrocity before him. 

He waits for a good twenty seconds, but there’s nothing. He presses the doorbell again, and again, and again and again and again until his finger hurts and his ears are vibrating.

He’s just opening his mouth to start yelling – it’s worked for him pretty well thus far, after all – when the massive arched door yawns open ponderously. Damn thing must be a foot thick.

And standing there, looking bored and mildly pissed off, is Okita Fucking Sougo.

This is it. This is what he’s been working towards. He worked out who it was that took a giant shit on his life, tracked him down, and now he’s got him where he wants him. He could reach out right this second and wring the life out of him.

Sougo blinks at him from behind his godawful sunglasses. “Took you long enough, danna.”

It’s at this moment that Gintoki realises he’s still wheezing slightly – hey, he ran a long way, okay? – and that Sougo has caught him with his mouth wide open in the pre-yell stage. Between his unfortunate expression and how he must smell after his little sojourn in the internet teahouse, he realises that Gin-san is probably not putting his best foot forward at this very moment.

But screw that! Who cares? Sougo stole his earnings and his image and his innocence, and he has to pay! Plus, that little ass is wearing a hoodie that has his own stupid face printed on it, so he’s clearly given up any right to criticise the appearance – or aroma – of anyone else.

Gintoki tries to come up with some kind of witty put-down – the kind of thing that would wither Sougo’s quite frankly over-inflated sense of self-worth where he stands – but all his thoughts are strangling each other, and the only thing that actually comes out of his mouth is some kind of stupid honking sound. Sougo seems to be looking at him expectantly, but as the seconds tick past, he apparently decides maybe he’s been hoping for too much and lets out a tiny, disappointed sigh. 

“Not even a punch? I expected better, danna.” His nose wrinkles in distaste. “When did you last bathe?”

“None of your goddamn business!” he snaps, and there, that’s better, at least he can form words now. Sure, it would’ve been better if he’d actually punched Sougo, since apparently the little shitstain was offering, but oh well, too late now. Maybe. Could he punch him now instead, when he least expects it? Is there ever a bad time to punch Sougo?

_Wait. Why did I come here again? Focus, Gin-san._

“My money!” he manages. “Give it to me right now, you little fucker, or I swear I’ll flay you alive and turn your pelt into this summer’s must-have item. All your hoity-toity little friends will be lining up for a piece of you.”

Sougo shrugs, and Gintoki has to begrudgingly admire how downright _infuriating_ he manages to make the gesture. In this department, at least, Sougo is operating on a level far beyond anything Gintoki could ever hope to achieve.

“I guess I have no choice but to pay you off then,” Sougo says with another sigh, and – really? Is he going to pay up? Are Gin-san’s troubles actually over?

 _Just think of all the pachinko I could play, the parfaits I could buy! I could pay off my rent! I wouldn’t actually_ do _it, but I_ could! 

He blinks as something passes in front of his eyes. Squints as it passes again, and –

That little piece of _shit_.

Sougo is lazily waving three hundred yen back and forth in front of his face, and it’s all Gintoki can do to quell the kneejerk reaction to make a grab for it. His hand twitches, and he grits his teeth even as humiliation turns his face hot.

Gin-san’s silence can’t be bought so cheaply, dammit! It’s downright insulting. He glowers at Sougo, steadfastly _not_ taking the money, until Sougo finally seems to get the message. 

“Oh, danna’s playing hardball, is he?”

 _Oh, that is_ it.

Gintoki doesn’t know why, but there’s something about the idea that him demanding his fair wages is playing hardball that frays his very, very last nerve. 

He leans forward, fists clenched by his side, his voice emerging as little more than an enraged hiss. “Do you really want to test me, Okita-kun? My bladder is full, and my patience is empty. I _will_ piss on you, you stupid little shit.”

For a moment, Gintoki is sure he sees a mild flicker in Sougo’s eyes, but then he simply shrugs yet again. “Okay, danna. You got me. How much, then?”

Gintoki realises with a wild kind of panic that he hasn’t actually thought this far ahead. Beyond the idea that he was most definitely _owed,_ he’d never actually come up with a concrete figure. And to be honest, he’d kind of expected that Sougo would put up more of a fight. Is this what happens when you have so much money that it simply ceases to have any meaning? 

_Crap._ What should he ask for? Should he start high so as to give himself plenty of room to negotiate down? Or should he underbid so as to be tempting despite Sougo’s better judgement? Shit, he bets Og*ri Sh*n never has these problems.

Sougo glances down at his watch. “As much as I’d love to spend the afternoon toying with you, I’ve got places to be –”

“This place has a dungeon, then?” Gintoki can’t help but cut in.

Sougo blinks behind his ridiculous glasses. “... Yes, but I’ve got that scheduled in for seven tonight through to midday tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got papers I need to sign, so let’s make this quick.”

“Huh? Papers?”

“Those things that you write on, danna.”

“I know what –” Gintoki – mostly – resists the urge to claw off his own face in frustration. He lets his breath out in a slow exhale and tries again. “What papers do you have to sign, and why is it so damn important that you sign them right now?”

“It’s grown-up stuff. You wouldn’t understand.” Gintoki’s hand twitches around his bokutou, and Sougo relents – though more, Gintoki suspects, from having got his desired reaction than from any kind of fear. “I have to finish off the paperwork for buying this house. There’s a lot of people interested in this place – apparently Tamo-san is on the phone trying to outbid me as we speak, so I’ve got to move fast.”

“You – ? A – a house – ?” He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of course the idiot is buying a house with his ill-gotten wealth. Of course it’s the most hideous thing anyone has ever seen. Gin-san doesn’t want such ostentatious things! He just wants a little home somewhere where he can put his feet up. Maybe a _slightly_ larger than average kitchen. Three fridges – four, tops. A futon large enough to cover the entire bedroom floor – no, large enough to cover the entire house. A butler to bring him his food whenever he rings a bell, and a beautiful woman to massage his feet. These are the modest desires of a humble man.

Over the course of the next two and a half seconds, Gintoki wonders if Hijikata gives good foot rubs, realises that the answer is a resounding _no,_ and recognises that he’d be lucky to even _have_ feet anymore were he to ever actually vocalise such a request, before he – swiftly, brutally, and without mercy – crushes the thought into oblivion. 

“Anyway,” Sougo continues blithely, “I was actually about to come looking for you. Now that I’m about to become a homeowner, I’m going to have a mortgage to pay. I wanted to talk to you about what you can do to make sure that sales remain brisk, because this place isn’t going to pay for itself.”

Ah, at last. Something Gintoki can use.

“Don’t give me that,” he shouts, attracting the stares of some well-heeled passers-by. “I want to see a contract before any of this goes any further.” He cracks his knuckles, making what he hopes is an intimidating face – he’s so tired he barely has any control over his facial muscles anymore. “Or I’ll never fight Hijikata ever again, and good luck paying off this pile of shit then.”

Sougo’s expression is somewhat sceptical, but he does at the very least pretend to consider it. “Fine. I’ll have my people call your people.”

 _You little shit! You_ know _my people are just Kagura and Shinpachi in suits!_

“In the meantime, I need to discuss with you some options for spicing things up. That old stuff’s getting stale now. We need something new to keep people coming back.”

“Spicing...?” Gintoki barely dares to contemplate what _that_ might entail. He’s seen what happens when people try to spice up the non-relationship he and Hijikata share, and it’s nothing good. How could he possibly spice things up while maintaining both his dignity and his fully clothed state? The spicing up’s going to have to all be on Hijikata’s end... but where the hell is he going to find an octopus that large and that willing?

“You know. Show a bit more skin. Try a few new positions. Keep the masses happy.” Sougo rubs his fingers together in the universal sign for ‘money’, and it’s almost enough to lure Gintoki in with its siren song, but – no. He has to stay strong. Ish.

“Ah.” He scratches at his head. His scalp is so fucking itchy and disgusting that he just wants to die. “Doesn’t that make me... I dunno... a prostitute?”

“All labour is prostitution,” Sougo says indifferently. “So yes, but only in the sense that we’re all prostitutes to the unproductive classes.”

Gintoki feels like there are a lot of things he _should_ be asking at this juncture, but Sougo’s already started turning away before he can get out any more questions. 

“Oh,” Sougo says as if in afterthought, turning back. “And for the moment, here – take this.” He hands Gintoki a wad of cash from his hoodie pocket. “Get a cab home.” His nose wrinkles delicately. “Take a bath. I’ll be in touch.”

The massive slab of a door closes in Gintoki’s face. He stands stock-still, staring into its impassive bulk, trying to sort through what exactly just happened. It’s almost out of a lack of anything better to do that he looks down at the crumpled notes Sougo unceremoniously deposited in his hand and starts counting them.

_2,000, 6,000, 8,000, 10,000... 20,000 yen??_

It’s obviously nothing like the sum Gintoki knows he’s owed, but it’s still enough to be mildly impressive. 

It’ll rapidly become less impressive, he realises, if he actually does take a cab home. That’s precious parfait money down the drain! More importantly, if he takes a cab, it’ll be like he’s doing what Sougo tells him to do, and as if he’s going to let that pompous little sadist order him about.

Anyway, first things first. He takes a long, _long_ leak on the front of the house, his knees going wobbly from the sheer relief. He looks across the street in time to see a curtain being hastily pulled across and smiles his first genuine smile in God knows how long – if he can do his bit to lower these rich knobs’ property values, it’ll all be worthwhile. Although preferably that wouldn’t happen until _after_ Sougo has paid top dollar for that godawful thing. Maybe he’ll come back tomorrow and take a dump in the middle of the road.

He stumbles along the footpath in what he hopes is the right direction, mentally patting himself on the back for remembering to tuck himself back into his pants after he’d finished the job. Now that he’s finally made some progress, the fatigue is rapidly starting to kick in. It’s not the tiredest he’s ever been, but it’s damn close... and that’s really kind of depressing, all things considered. But... still. The battle for Gin-san’s honour may not end up in the history books, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less important than the other battles he’s fought!

Maybe he’s getting delirious. It really would not be a surprise. Now that he’s taken care of the pissing, he thinks he’ll try for sleeping next, then bathing, then eating, then sleeping some more. Beyond that, he doesn’t care to contemplate. 

Even as his mind is overwhelmed with thoughts of going home and face-planting into his futon, he’s aware of _something_ poking him in a way that isn’t going to give him any peace until he’s confronted it. There’s a twinge in his gut that he can readily identify after having encountered it so many times over the years, even when he doesn’t want to acknowledge it: the irritating, stabby little pangs of guilt. 

Gritting his teeth, Gintoki admits that maybe, just _maybe,_ he should find Hijikata and tell him what’s going on. He doesn’t want to call his painful gut an attack of conscience per se, but he does kind of feel a _bit_ bad about... well, all of it.

He _probably_ could have handled some aspects of this whole situation better. Looking back, Gintoki can admit that fighting with the guy, yelling at him about a lawyer, and then spending several days collecting pornographic legal evidence while cultivating an unfortunate boner was probably _not_ the most mature and productive way of dealing with things.

There’s also the issue where he’s now apparently agreed to get raunchy whenever he and Hijikata encounter each other in public. Not that he actually agreed to any of that – Sougo’d just pushed the money at him and closed the (ugly, ugly) door in his face. There hasn’t even been a contract drawn up yet, so it’s not like he has to _actually_ do anything at all.

Stopping in the middle of the footpath, Gintoki sighs. 

Maybe he should just go back and throw the money in the brat’s stupid sullen face. Maybe he should destroy every copy of the DVDs he can find. _Maybe_ he should go tell Hijikata what the hell’s going on, like some sort of sensible adult.

... Okay, fine. He’ll talk to Hijikata. He might even pretend to listen to him yelling and screaming for a full ten seconds as a goodwill gesture. Gin-san is feeling benevolent right now. 

He almost trips over a handrail that some rude person has placed in his path, and is getting ready to make his displeasure known when his addled brain catches up with what his eyes were trying to tell him: the handrail is attached to a staircase, and the staircase leads to his home.

Well. It probably does, anyway. It looks like the right one, but it’s hard to tell for certain through the tears of sheer relief that well up in his eyes. He doesn’t care anymore _what_ kind of looks Otose or Catherine or Shinpachi or Kagura throw in his direction now – the outside world and everyone in it can go to hell, quite frankly. 

He starts to drag himself up the stairs, one leaden step at a time. He realises as soon as he gets inside that he probably won’t be going anywhere for at least thirty-six hours, and he really should furnish Hijikata with an explanation sometime in the next two. Pausing, Gintoki groans – he _cannot_ drag himself out to the Shinsengumi compound right now. He physically cannot. 

Sure, there’s the matter of him being so tired he can barely stand up, and the fact that that is a conversation he needs to have while he is his most well-rested and least fragrant self. But there’s also the small matter of the fact that doing so will most likely involve having to look Hijikata in the eye, which he’s not at all certain he can do just now. Which would be fine, if Gintoki could be sure he’d just gaze lazily over Hijikata’s shoulder or something instead, but no, he has this horrible feeling that his eyes, contrary to both his bidding and all good sense, are just going to be roving about elsewhere on Hijikata’s person. He’s seen too much in the past few days, and there’s no way of unseeing it now. Gintoki is going to need at least a few hours’ separation between the Hijikatas he has saved onto the internet teahouse computer and the actual live reality. There’s no way he can head over there until he’s had a chance to rest and can be sure that his eyes are going to stay where he wants them. Which is absolutely, definitely, on Hijikata’s stupid face. 

Maybe he can just... send him a note. Surely at least one vulture or another will be circling around waiting to pick at his almost-corpse. He can send one of them off with a delivery errand on the promise of a couple of yen. He has no idea what exactly he’ll put in this note other than that he and Hijikata need to talk; knowing Hijikata, he’ll either yell something about not being at Gintoki’s beck and call and ignore it completely, or he’ll be over here in thirty seconds flat to kick the door down and demand to know what the hell Gintoki thinks he’s doing sending him notes.

Either way, Gintoki knows he better make his hay while the sun is shining. 

Okay: note, then sleep. Everything else can wait till later.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up a couple of days early as we'll be away over the weekend! :) I hope you enjoy - we're on the home stretch now :D

Hijikata is rapidly beginning to realise that this is not a website he’s been looking at for the past few hours – _days?_ – it’s a sinkhole. A sinkhole into which he has now poured untold amounts of his own money. 

He’d tried to stop thinking about the expense round about the time he’d forked out for the fourth month’s subscription fee – which he’d had no choice but to do, because what the misleading text about subscriber-only content had failed to mention was that signing up only got you access to _this_ month’s content. If you wanted to go back and look at any previous month’s bonus videos, you had to pay extra. 

Hijikata grinds his teeth as he stabs at the laptop’s keyboard. He doesn’t know how many months he’s shelled out for now – how can _none_ of them have the video he’s after? And how many months has this fucking website been in operation, anyway? Who the hell is PDH Industries, and how do they keep getting footage of him? Are they watching him right now?!

Taking a deep breath and most definitely _not_ glancing over his shoulder like some paranoid freak, he forces himself to stay calm, or at least what passes for calm at this point in his life. He feels like his baseline has been significantly altered recently. He’s only watched enough of the subscriber-only videos to ascertain they’re not the one he wants, but he’s left them all open in various browser tabs anyway – he might need them. The overtaxed laptop’s fan is whirring hard enough to send the stupid thing into orbit, but dammit, that’s its problem. 

He clicks the _confirm_ button as he finishes – yet again – entering his credit card details, and waits. 

_Congrats on becoming a subscriber!!!!!!! Click here for your BONUS VIDEO!!!!!!!_

Mindlessly, Hijikata clicks. He could do this in his sleep by now. He waits, since along with everything else that’s awful about it, this website is slow as balls to load – but then, the screen is filled with an all-too-familiar black blurry nothing.

Hijikata blinks, not sure he wants to believe his eyes. Is this it? Did he actually find the fucking thing?

And – yes, there it goes. The camera swings up. The lights of Edo come into frame. There’s him and Yorozuya, stumbling down the street, bathed in the glow of the lanterns of bars and oden stands. Here’s Yorozuya making his idiotic remarks about going back to Hijikata’s place – _as if I get any fucking privacy around here!_ – before saying they could go back to his, since China’s not around. 

Swallowing, Hijikata leans forward. Right. Okay. Moment of truth. Or _not_ moment of truth, because he doesn’t _need_ a moment of truth. He _knows_ he didn’t... do that with Yorozuya. Surely, he didn’t. He can’t have. _Because I’d remember that._

He quickly scrubs that thought from his mind. No, _not_ because he’d remember, but because it just wouldn’t happen.

And – okay. Here’s the moment where the preview video cut off. Hijikata takes a furious drag on his cigarette and prepares himself.

There’s a long, slow moment as Yorozuya leans into him and their silhouettes merge, blocking out the light behind them. Staring at the screen, Hijikata feels his mouth go completely dry, his cigarette dangling forgotten from his lips. The only thing in his head is the roar of blood in his ears, as Yorozuya slowly continues on past him, keels over, and then, loudly and with extreme prejudice, begins emptying the contents of his stomach onto the ground at Hijikata’s feet.

The Hijikata on the screen stands over him, stock-still, for several moments while he hurls, simply looking down at him. Then he lifts a cigarette to his mouth, lights it, and turns away, walking off down the alley without looking back. He's almost disappeared into the half-light when Yorozuya rolls over, groaning, and looks around. 

“Hijikata? Where did –”

The Hijikata in the real world watches as Yorozuya scrambles up, swaying, looking first up and then down the street before apparently spotting his departing back halfway down the alley. 

“Oi, Hijikata! Hiji–”

Maybe a fresh wave of nausea overtakes him at that point, because he cuts himself off, squatting down as he passes a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes. He seems like he’s about to throw up again, but then, to Hijikata’s surprise, he slams his fist down into the ground by his side. 

“Ah, shit. Shit shit shit shit. _Shit._ ”

Hijikata leans towards the screen, barely able to make out the long line of slurred expletives Gintoki is muttering under his breath. But then there’s an annoyed _tch_ from behind the camera, and the video ends. 

Hijikata blinks. He knows he should be feeling pretty good about himself right now. He was right all along – nothing _happened,_ except that he did what he ought to have done right from the start and left that idiot sitting on his ass in the street. He waits for the feeling of triumph to surge through him, maybe treat himself to a little gloating, but instead there’s just a weird, empty ache in his chest that takes him several seconds to identify as _disappointment_. 

Which obviously makes _no_ sense whatsoever – he _won,_ dammit – but he can’t shake the feeling.

Or maybe he just feels odd because he hasn’t checked all the other videos yet. If he and Yorozuya apparently got that close to face-on-face contact in this instance, then it stands to reason that maybe they did the same – or worse – on a different occasion.

The need to know is like an insistent, irresistible itch beneath his skin; his hand twitches on the mouse, and then he’s opening one of the other tabs before his better judgement can raise any objections. Specifically, he’s opening a video that he knows came as part of the _Manly Men, Gentle Gropings_ extra special bonus pack. Might as well go all the way – better to die quickly of mortification than suffer the rest of his days in brutal, drawn-out uncertainty.

The video opens to a shot of Hijikata sitting on a stool in some izakaya, swaying almost imperceptibly – and there’s Yorozuya striding in through the front door, yelling incoherently and making a beeline for Hijikata’s position.

In the real world, Hijikata fortifies himself with a swig of mayonnaise, lights another cigarette, and settles in to meet his inevitable doom.

 

***

 

He’s not sure when he last went outside; he has, at least, been here in his room long enough to chain-smoke it into smoky oblivion. The laptop screen glows eerily in the permahaze, bathing the room in perpetual twilight. Who knows how many days it’s been since he ensconced himself in here?

But he can’t go out. Out is where the cameras are. He’s reasonably certain that this room is safe – he tore apart the contents of all the cupboards in search of recording devices at one point – but it can’t hurt to cultivate a smokescreen just in case.

Speaking of, the cigarette he’s been furiously puffing away at for the past few minutes is now well and truly finished. He fumbles blindly for a new one, eyes fixed on the screen before him as he and Yorozuya wrestle on the ground and – are they pulling at each other’s hair? Well, Yorozuya is pulling at _his_ hair, but that’s the kind of dick move that he’s come to expect from that asshole. The Hijikata on the screen looks like he also has a handful of Yorozuya’s hair, but that’s a perfectly reasonable response to having his own hair yanked out of his head. It doesn’t count if it’s in retaliation for some other idiot doing it to him in the first place.

He stares as the two of them grapple with each other, even as his fingers continue their fruitless search for a cigarette.

 _Does this come under Rolling Around on Ground Screaming or Shirt-Grabbing and Eyefucki– Angry Glaring? It can’t be Yelling in Various Locales, since it’s all in the one alleyway. There_ has _been some Pressing Foreheads Together, but it’s not really the main event._

Hijikata groans, rubbing at his aching eyes. It’s all too much to think about. And where the _fuck_ are his cigarettes?

He pauses the video, right at a _really_ poorly timed moment. Yorozuya is letting go of his hair, but it makes it look like he’s cupping Hijikata’s cheek instead. Almost like he’s pulling him in for a mid-fight kiss or something equally ridiculous, haha. Ha.

It’s so ridiculous that he can’t stop staring at it.

The unfortunate pressure in his pants is suddenly more insistent, and his jaw clamps painfully tight in a vain attempt to divert his body’s attention elsewhere.

Why would his body even react to such an awful sight? It has to be some sort of weird automatic reflex, right?

_It’s not that – I mean, I don’t – but –_

It’s not like he’s _entirely_ uninterested in men. Just because the only person he’s ever _really_ wanted before now was a woman doesn’t mean he can’t admit that about himself without too much angst. You don’t dedicate your life to the Shinsengumi without spending pretty much all of your time in the close company of other men, and any tendency towards urges in that direction becomes pretty hard to ignore.

Yeah, he wouldn’t care if his dick decided it wanted another man. What he _does_ care about is the fact that his dick apparently wants the biggest fucking idiot this side of Mount Fuji.

He suddenly recalls the time he told Yorozuya that he would never date a bitch like him. He’d well and truly meant it at the time, and he wants to mean it now. Just the thought of the words _date_ and _Yorozuya_ in the same sentence gives him chills.

There’s no denying that, male or female, the guy is an absolute bitch. It’s ingrained into his DNA.

Then why does the thought of the idiot kissing him make him hard?! Why has he watched that damned Lucky Dip video so many times? Why is he currently staring hungrily at this freeze-frame with one hand inching towards his dick? Why is he fantasising about how nice it would be to shut up that incessantly jabbering mouth with his own? 

It’s with a mounting horror that the realisation dawns upon him: he absolutely would... d*te... a bitch like Yorozuya.

Well, no. He wouldn’t d*te him. He might fuck him, though. Maybe some mouth-touching, if only because it would be weird to avoid mouth-to-mouth contact when their mouths would be that close anyway.

... God, why does his life have to be like this? What the hell did he do to deserve any of this?

He tears his eyes away from the laptop, from the image of stupid Yorozuya and his stupid hand and the way that the stupid Hijikata on the screen seems to be leaning into it.

Cigarette. He needs a cigarette.

He resumes his search, almost frantic now, digging around in the pile of cigarette boxes and shaking each one desperately in the hope that it’ll contain the glorious relief he seeks.

But – nothing. Somehow, he’s managed to get through the entire lot without realising how low his supply had run, and now he’s just a man without an outlet for the seething... whatever it is... that’s coursing through his veins.

There’s only one action that he can take at times like this.

“YAMAZAKI!!!”

There’s a quick scuffling of footsteps in the hallway and the telltale sound of the door sliding open, and –

_Oh, shit shit shit –_

He quickly changes his position and pulls the laptop onto his lap, hoping against hope that any damning evidence of his highly regrettable boner is adequately covered. But crap, the video is still paused on _that_ , and even though Yamazaki is currently too busy gagging on cigarette smoke to pay attention, surely he’ll notice it at any moment –

... Ah, fuck it. Yamazaki’s already watched a bunch of this bullshit on Hijikata’s orders. And Hijikata’s acting on Matsudaira’s orders, so really, he has no choice but to do this. He tries to pull his expression into something approaching indifference, and fails horribly.

Yamazaki squints at him through the haze. His eyes dart to the screen for a moment, before sliding uncomfortably back towards Hijikata’s face. “Ah, Vice-Chief. You called?”

“Yamazaki. I need more cigarettes.”

“More...?” Yamazaki coughs. “I already maxed out the monthly cigarette budget.”

“Do I look like I care? I –”

Hijikata stops. Blinks. He didn’t think this week could get any more surprising, but apparently he was very, very wrong.

When he speaks, it’s slow and deliberate.

“Yamazaki. Why aren’t you wearing any pants?”

Yamazaki straightens. “I KonIsaoed them, Vice-Chief.”

_For the love of –_

Hijikata doesn’t know what the words mean exactly, but he can guess. Of course Kondou has something to do with this. It’s the least surprising thing in the world. 

It doesn’t mean he has to stand for this bullshit, though. He should be able to spend a few days chasing down leads without the entire Shinsengumi falling to pieces around him.

He smiles – one of the scarier smiles that he keeps reserved for special occasions. Yamazaki gulps, but holds his nerve.

“I see. And your underwear – you... KonIsaoed them as well?”

Yamazaki’s gaze is defiant, but – oh yeah, that’s pants-crapping fear underneath it all. Well, Hijikata’s got some bad news for him on that front.

“They weren’t sparking any joy, Vice-Chief. I – I thought it was best if I removed them from my life.”

Hijikata can feel his smile twitching. He’s not in full control of himself right now, and it would be really, _really_ nice to just let loose all of the rage and confusion of the past however many days on the nearest convenient target. He’s _so fucking close_ to just drop-kicking Yamazaki into the next prefecture. Sparking joy? That sounds suspiciously like something that idiot Katsura would say. If it weren’t for the fact that this little farce has Kondou’s name all over it, he’d be investigating his own men for spreading Jouishishi propaganda.

He motions Yamazaki over to him. The little jerk approaches cautiously, and Hijikata makes sure to maintain eye contact with him the whole time – ostensibly to instil the fear and respect that Yamazaki should feel by default, but also just because he really doesn’t need to see Yamazaki’s junk right now. Or ever. But especially not right now.

Why is he even worrying about covering up his own junk? Out of the two of them, Yamazaki should be _way_ more embarrassed.

He beckons Yamazaki closer, until he’s leaning down with his ear right next to Hijikata’s mouth. Yamazaki’s shoulders are tense with anticipation – he’s obviously ready to cringe away the moment Hijikata starts yelling. Hijikata’s smile becomes a little more genuine. It’s been way too long since he’s had the opportunity to fuck with one of his men, and hell, Yamazaki deserves it.

“Yamazaki,” he murmurs.

“... Yes, Vice-Chief?”

“Get me some fucking cigarettes.”

Yamazaki blinks. Clearly, he was expecting much worse.

“Is that all, Vice-Chief?”

“Oh, yeah.” His voice drops lower, so that Yamazaki has to strain towards him. “If you don’t put on some pants in the next ten seconds, I’ll sparking you right through that door.”

“Y-yes, Vice-Chief!”

Yamazaki disappears, slamming the door behind him. Fear seems to have lent him wings, and he returns in record time, his arms loaded down with boxes of cigarettes and his shame covered by a pair of boxer shorts with bananas on them – which isn’t perfect, but it’s a definite improvement. 

Hijikata doesn’t even wait for him to finish stacking them on the floor before he grabs a box, opens it, shoves a cigarette into his mouth, lights it, breathes in, and then exhales the smoke into the hazy cloud that’s already hanging low over the room. He closes his eyes, allowing himself just one sublime, nicotine-fuelled moment of peace, before Yamazaki’s voice pulls him back into the real world.

“Uh, Vice-Chief?”

Hijikata doesn’t bother to answer him with words – he just swivels his head in Yamazaki’s direction, glaring at him with what he hopes is the fury of a thousand suns, but is probably a little more like a cheap desk lamp directed at his face. Regardless, Yamazaki only blinks a little, before pointing to the floor by his feet.

“Vice-Chief, have you read the notes I’ve been delivering?”

_Notes? What the hell? What notes?_

Hijikata has literally no memory of Yamazaki bringing him any notes, and yet there they are, stacked in a neat pile on the floor next to the door. Hijikata stares at them, blinking. Who’s been sending him notes?

It’s probably Kondou, he thinks, as Yamazaki decides to take this moment to make himself scarce, sliding the door closed behind him. Kondou’s probably been sending him notes about how Shinsengumi investigations have been progressing during his absence... or, more likely, whatever the hell KonIsaoing is. Well, in either case, he should probably look at them. Maybe it’ll take his mind off the truly awful revelations of the past few hours. Remind him that whatever else he might be, he’s still the vice-commander of the Shinsengumi, and at some stage he’ll probably need to start acting like it. 

Crawling his muscle-aching, joint-popping way across the floor, Hijikata picks up the first note, frowning at it in the half-light.

 _FKING SOOG??????????? Hiijk-kum w need 2 tlak can you cm hre??????? or ill go thre whatevr also yr not tht hot dn;t get an ideas_

Hijikata squints at it. What the fuck is this supposed to mean? This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing Kondou would send to him, so who the hell did? Why the hell would Yamazaki even give it to him?

Snarling, he grabs the next one in the pile.

_Hello, Hijikata-kun? Can you answer my note? Like, now?_

All the blood drains out of Hijikata’s face as it suddenly becomes horribly, awfully clear who the author of these notes is. _No. NO. For fuck’s sake, no!_

He grabs the next one.

_What, so you’re ignoring me? Real mature, asshole._

_Seriously though, we need to talk. Come here._

\- 

_Much as I’m enjoying this rare moment of silence from you, you stupid shit, we actually do need to talk. I don’t know how much plainer I can make it: come here. Now._

\- 

_Okay, Hijikata-kun, the shit’s just hit the fan, and I’m out of fucking patience. Your brainless goons won’t let me in the front gate, so I can’t come to you, so you need to get your head out of your arse and realise I wouldn’t be fucking sending you all these little love letters without a good reason. Things are getting critical now, and honestly it’s been like a week, so you can’t still be on the rag. Come here. Now._

_PS. They’re not love letters._

\- 

_What, are you fucking offended or something because I said you weren’t that hot? Is that it? Is that the bug that’s crawled up your butt and died? Because if it is, then fine! I’m sorry! You’re super-hot, okay? My dreams are all of Hijikata-kun! I jerk off to you non-stop! Are you happy now? Are you?? Have I placated your rampaging ego??? Now get your (sweet, perky) ass over here **today**. Please. Look, I even said please! Fuck’s sake!_

Hijikata stares down at what is apparently Gintoki’s most recent missive. Yorozuya has been... jerking off? And he’s felt the need to advise Hijikata of this fact? Apparently?

Wait – he’s been jerking off while thinking about _him??_ Where? How many times? Has his jerking off been spite-driven or lust-driven? Does this mean that Hijikata now has a get-out-of-gaol-free card if he were to – hypothetically – deal with his own massively fucking inconvenient hard-on by jerking it to thoughts of a certain perm-headed imbecile?

What kind of things does Yorozuya imagine him doing when he gets off? Is the Hijikata in his sordid imagination just lying there like a dead fish, or does Yorozuya have him doing all kinds of ridiculous bullshit? Which is worse?!

Wait – or was he just being sarcastic? Is the idea of Yorozuya getting off to thoughts of him so deeply laughable that he put it in there as a joke?? Oh. That’s... a relief, if that’s the case. Definitely a relief. Yeah. He sure as shit doesn’t feel weirdly hollow at the idea.

Hijikata realises that he’s drifted off a little bit, and he hauls his attention back, kicking and screaming, to the topic at hand. Which is definitely the reasoning behind the notes that Yorozuya has apparently been sending him, and _not_ his own fucking mystifying taste in men.

So. Yorozuya’s been sending him notes for... however long. But that then raises a whole swathe of other questions: What’s Yorozuya’s plan here? Why did he apparently think that insulting his looks in the very first note he sent was a surefire way to get him onside? When did he even send these cryptic fucking things? Who the hell knows which day was the **today** that it was apparently so urgent that he go see Yorozuya by?

Vaguely, Hijikata realises that there’s an insistent dinging noise ringing out from somewhere behind him, demanding his attention. It’s irritating as hell, but he has to admit that he’s somewhat grateful for the distraction from his pointlessly whirling thoughts. He needs somewhere to focus his ire, and neither Yamazaki nor Yorozuya are here right now; all he has left is the computer and himself, and the computer is by far the preferable option.

A small icon flashes in the corner of the screen. He glares at it. The fuck is this bullshit?

There’s text underneath:

_JOIN BOTH LIVE STREAMS NOW!!!!!_

_ Yorozuya _

_ Shinsengumi _

It suddenly feels very much like there’s a very large, very strong hand closing around his throat. Is breathing supposed to be this difficult?

He looks about the room frantically, but there’s nothing except the cigarette smoke and the mess he made earlier when he was checking for cameras. If someone _did_ put a camera in here, it’d be buried under a pile of other stuff now. There’s no way anyone could be watching him.

... Still. He didn’t get this far in life – not that it feels like he’s done particularly well for himself at this exact moment – by ignoring any cold, insistent feelings of creeping dread in his stomach.

Swallowing, he clicks on the Shinsengumi link and waits for it to load with what can only be described as vague queasiness. It’s frigging ridiculous. He’s been stabbed, shot, blown up, and dropped from high places more times than could reasonably be described as plausible, and remained calm and professional in every instance; he’s sure as hell not going to puke his guts out over something like unexpectedly having his every action broadcast over the internet. He’s destroyed dozens of cameras over the course of his career! He doesn’t fear them!

... What if they’ve been installed in the urinals? Who knows how far the tentacles of PDH Industries reach?? When did he forget how to breathe in and out like a normal human being?! _Fuck._

The screen chooses that moment to load; but now that it’s finally before him, he can’t look. He squeezes his eyes shut and clamps a sweaty hand over his face. It’s a long, long moment before he manages to slide his fingers apart enough so that they’re not entirely covering his eyes, but said eyes remain stubbornly closed.

_Aren’t you a samurai? Is this really the best you can do? Are you going to just sit here like some pathetic coward forever?!_

In the end, it’s not the self-flagellation that impels him to action, but rather the idea that _if_ there is indeed a livestream of his actions being broadcast, then an untold number of shut-ins and NEETs are at this very moment watching him sit there with his hand over his face. He has his pride, dammit. He’s not quite sure where it is right now, but he knows for a fact that it does exist.

He forces one heavy eyelid open just enough to let the light in, and....

Oh.

Slowly, shakily, he extends one arm out to his side.

The figure on the screen does the same.

He moves his arm up and down, wiggles the fingers. The doppelgänger echoes the movement, albeit on the slightest of delays.

_Oh, shit._

His head jerks about as he tries to look at the entirety of the room at once. Where the hell is that camera? How did it possibly manage to evade him? He grabs the laptop in rigid fingers and turns around so that he can see behind him while still seeing what’s on the screen. _Yes, there – wait, no – God, this is so –_

Every time he thinks he’s worked out where the camera must be, it turns out that he’s gotten everything turned around in his head, and it’s all the wrong way around. Fuck’s sake!

He tenses his shoulders in preparation to send the laptop flying across the room, but stops at the last moment, even as his chest heaves in shallow breaths. If he destroys the laptop, not only will he never know what’s going on, but all of _them_ will see him do it. There’ll be recordings of him losing his ever-loving shit springing up all over the place, and he just... can’t. His self-respect is teetering on the edge of oblivion as it is.

He blinks, taking a moment to really _look_ at what’s on the screen. At the scattered cigarette boxes, the dead laptops, the ankle-deep sea of mayonnaise bottles, the neglected paperwork, the overfilled ashtrays, the mess of hastily overturned possessions – all of it rendered hazily indistinct by the ever-present, days-old cigarette smog. It’s absolutely fucking disgusting. It looks like the kind of place that Yorozuya would happily call home.

But worst of all – worse than all the absolutely disgusting bullshit – is the poor dumb bastard sitting there in the middle of it all, clutching his laptop for dear life and staring at the corners of the room as if they’re out to get him.

And okay, the outside world _is_ out to get him. But the outside world also has fresh air and water and clean clothes and showers – showers infested with cameras, but that’s fine, he can clean himself in the dark – and, just, it’s not _here_. 

This is beyond ridiculous. He has to get out. Just close the laptop, and... get out. Get clean, get some sleep, catch up on any urgent business, make Yamazaki get himself some goddamn pants. Not that PDH Industries isn’t going to go down, of course, and not that he’s not going to have to do some serious soul-searching re: his sudden raging obsession with whether or not he ever got frisky with that silver-haired dickhead, but surely that can wait at least a little while. He’s starting to think that he’s seriously losing his mind in here. Not even Tosshi would’ve been caught dead in such a rank cesspit of days-old filth and sexual desperation.

Okay, that’s it. He’s made his decision. He’s going to get out of this room.

Rolling over onto his hands and knees with a groan, Hijikata pauses, savouring the moment before his joints and muscles will inevitably start protesting in earnest. How long has he been here? The hell is wrong with him?

He’s just starting to get his feet under him when he hears it – a muffled yell coming from somewhere outside. He pauses, frowning, and – there it is again. Something that sounds like an insult – he can’t quite pick out the words, but it’s definitely an insult – then _come out here and fight me, you useless prick,_ then a _Hijikata-kuuuuuuun_ that could only come from one idiotic, perm-headed source –

He stumbles over his own feet as he pulls himself upright. He absolutely cannot let Yorozuya see him like this. Partially because it’s humiliating, but _mostly,_ he thinks, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, because he looks like three-day-old ass, and Yorozuya might find that off-putting. He’s going to have to try to find a way out of here that won’t involve running into Yorozuya... and how did he even get into the Shinsengumi compound, anyway? The idiot’s still yelling away outside – mainly variations on _fight me_ – and –

... Wait.

Hijikata blinks, trying to sort through the jumble in his mind. God, when was the last time he slept? 

_If Yorozuya’s_ here... _and the livestream is_ there....

Fury suddenly knifes through his gut as comprehension dawns. 

Hadn’t that bastard told him he wasn’t involved in this? Perhaps not in so many words, but Hijikata’s not sure what else he was supposed to infer from Yorozuya showing up, threatening to take him to court, and possibly making passes at him via hand-delivered notes. 

Suddenly, Yorozuya or anyone else seeing him in his current state is the last thing on his mind. He’s _way_ too angry to think about any of that just now. Rage propels him on his shambling, staggering way to the door, slamming it open before he stumbles onto the walkway, looking out into the courtyard. Sure enough, there’s Yorozuya, standing in the middle of the Shinsengumi compound and gesticulating like a fool as he yells. And _there_ over by the corner of the building, holding a camcorder in one hand and a lit match in the other, is – is –

Fucking _Sougo??_

Hijikata takes a brief moment to appreciate just how fucking obvious this whole thing was from start to finish. Who else? Really, who the fuck else? 

_Wait. Fucking... SOOG? FKING SOOG???????????_

Is _this_ what Yorozuya’s incomprehensible note had been about? Was he trying to... warn him or something? Was he –

“Oh, Hijikata-san,” Sougo says, as if mildly surprised, interrupting Hijikata’s thoughts, such as they are. “I didn’t think you were coming out. I was just about to set fire to your room so you’d have to.”

“You – I – _what_ –”

“Oops,” Sougo says blandly, dropping the match next to the outside wall of Hijikata’s room.

“What the _fu–_ ” Hijikata starts to yell, but that’s as far as he gets before something hard and heavy barrels into him, sending him flying. It’s not unlike getting hit by a truck... and, just like the last time that happened, he finds himself flat on his back and in way too close a proximity to that asshole Yorozuya.

Except that this time, said asshole is climbing on top of him and pinning him down, most of his weight bearing down on Hijikata’s thighs, his left hand trapping Hijikata’s wrist next to his head. Yorozuya’s right hand is occupying itself with slapping him back and forth across the face – nowhere near as hard as Hijikata knows he’s capable of, but just hard enough to disorient him for a moment while he tries to get his bearings. His whole hazy state of mind is probably not being helped by the way that Yorozuya’s knee is pressing perilously close to his crotch, or the fact that he’s leaning in real close while he bitch-slaps Hijikata into temporary submission.

The heat of Yorozuya’s body atop his own is enough to short-circuit his ability to think for a few critical seconds, all processes that would normally power his brain instead re-directing their energies in a more southerly direction, and so he finds himself staring up at Yorozuya’s face instead. There’s a desperate look in his eyes that would, at any other time, leave him either amused or irritated, but right now there’s just a traitorous voice in Hijikata’s head whispering _that’s hot,_ and fucked if he knows what to do about any of this.

Yorozuya is saying something to him, but the words aren’t quite penetrating his mind. He _is_ aware of the gasp that escapes his own mouth when Yorozuya shifts his weight, the sweat that is slowly soaking through his clothes where Yorozuya presses close against him... and the presence of another voice that cuts through the fog that shrouds his mind.

“That’s right, danna. Just like that – a little more to the left – that’s it, you’re a natural. Keep it up, danna.”

Sougo’s voice is like a bucket of cold water dropped directly onto his junk – a bucket of cold water filled with piranhas, and also acid. The fuck is that little shithead doing – _oh_. Hijikata got a bit distracted when Yorozuya drop-kicked him across the yard, and he’s still having trouble tearing his gaze away from Yorozuya’s stupid face, but he remembers Sougo, and he remembers the camcorder.

And the livestream.

Yeah. _Oh_ is one way of putting it. 

Hijikata starts to fight back in earnest now, bucking up in an attempt to throw Yorozuya off, but the idiot has him pinned good. He doesn’t know what to do with his free hand; if he were actually fighting for his life, he’d go for the throat or the eyes, but in this instance he settles for a kind of face-shoving tactic that will hopefully, if nothing else, piss Yorozuya off enough to distract him into giving Hijikata an opening.

While grabbing onto Yorozuya’s face _does_ successfully prompt him into letting up on the face-slapping, it has the unfortunate side effect of encouraging the asshole to use his now-free hand to grasp at Hijikata’s no-longer-free wrist. He should’ve seen this coming from a million miles away, but he’s struggling to think about any of this in too much detail, given that Yorozuya now has him completely immobilised.

_So much for the brilliant Shinsengumi strategist. Outmanoeuvred by your own dick._

... Fuck, today is just wall-to-wall bullshit. He’d thought that he’d reached his nadir when he saw the paranoid, filth-encrusted state he’d descended into, but now the world is apparently watching him get ridden into the dirt by some unemployable hobo, and yeah, he hates everything.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Yorozuya leans down to hiss directly into his face. “Didn’t you read my notes? I gave them to Shinpachi, who gave them to Jimmy-kun, who said he gave them to you, so I _know_ you got them.”

“Notes?” It takes him a moment to wrap his head around what Yorozuya is on about. “Hah – you mean that incoherent garbage where you kept telling me to meet up with you without any explanation and then filled me in on the details of your relationship with your right hand? Congratulations on that, by the way – it’s impressive, how long the two of you have managed to stay devoted to each other.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that Gin-san is a very skilled and considerate lover. He doesn’t limit himself to one hand... though I’m not surprised to hear that Hijikata-kun is as boringly by-the-book in this area as he is everywhere else. I bet there’s an article in the Shinsengumi Code telling everyone how often to beat their meat, and that the Demon Vice-Commander has no choice but to make sure it’s rigorously enforced, right?”

There’s a pink tinge to Yorozuya’s cheeks that belies the bluster, and Hijikata knows that he’s struck a nerve. He opens his mouth to deliver a blistering reply, but two things happen at once: Yorozuya’s knee slips down his thigh so that it’s now pressing directly into his balls, and Sougo’s fucking monotonous voice says, “Yeah, that’s the spot, danna.”

Hijikata takes a couple of seconds to get himself under control – there may have been an undignified noise in there somewhere, but it’s completely understandable, given the circumstances. There are some places you just don’t hit a guy during a fight, and you certainly don’t leave your knee there for the duration. Does Yorozuya have no shame?!

Well, he knows the answer to that one. Yorozuya and shame probably couldn’t co-exist without it causing some sort of crisis in the fabric of reality itself.

He strains against the hold on his wrists, but it’s just too strong, and the rest of him is effectively held captive by Yorozuya’s knee. He doesn’t want to struggle too hard – better to let everyone think that he’s letting this happen of his own free will. Not because he _wants_ to be pinned down in the dirt beneath Yorozuya, but because he’s finally managed to get Yorozuya into a position where he’ll talk to him about all this bullshit that’s been going on.

Yeah.

_What the hell do I do now? Shit._

The knowledge that this is all being beamed live around the world really is not helping matters. Seppuku is starting to sound like a more and more likely endpoint for this farce, and he idly wonders if Kondou would still be his second after all the disgrace that he’s brought upon the Shinsengumi over the past few days.

... Where the hell _is_ Kondou? Why isn’t he here to rescue him? He wouldn’t even care if he was naked – the sight of his commander’s all-too-familiar junk would be a sweet relief at this point.

_Focus. If you can’t get yourself out of this mess, then you don’t deserve your position._

No, he’s going to have to talk Yorozuya into getting off him himself. Fine. He can do that. What was Yorozuya banging on about before the conversation got derailed into a discussion about Yorozuya jerking off?

Oh, yeah. Those incoherent notes of his.

“Moron,” Yorozuya mutters, and okay, Hijikata can admit that he was probably taking too long to respond. He opens his mouth to yell something – anything – only to find that Gintoki has somehow fucking manhandled him so now he’s pinning _both_ Hijikata’s wrists with one hand, while the other clamps over his mouth.

 _What the – what the_ hell –

Yorozuya leans in even closer, lips next to Hijikata’s ear, cheek almost brushing his face, and Hijikata twitches as a breath spasms in his chest. 

“Hijikata,” Yorozuya whispers, his voice sounding weird in Hijikata’s ear. “Listen to me for once in your life. This whole thing is a set-up. Sougo’s been recording us and then selling the footage –”

_No shit!_

“– And then you wouldn’t reply to my very helpful and explanatory notes, so I had to get the little bastard to let me in here so I could talk to you in person. He only did it because it meant he could get some new material –”

_Which you’re providing him with, you complete idiot!_

“– But I have absolutely nothing to do with this! I admit, I _may_ have signed a contract while I was still sleep-deprived, but your Shinsengumi lawyers can get me out of that, right? You can’t legally bind the sleep-deprived, right? Some guy in a suit came to my door while I was in a helpless, vulnerable state, and I didn’t know what I was do–”

Yorozuya cuts himself off suddenly, a quick series of expressions chasing themselves across his face in the moments that follow.

“Wait a minute,” he hisses, when his face finally settles on ‘incredulous’, with maybe a hint of ‘scorn’, “do you have a fucking _boner_ right now?”

“No!” Hijikata blurts out automatically when Gintoki finally takes his hand away, in the full and complete knowledge that he absolutely does, and that it’s entirely Yorozuya’s fault. He can already feel his face going red, and _God_ he hopes Sougo’s camcorder microphone is too shitty to pick up anything Gintoki just said to him.

“You do! Don’t lie to me! That’s illegal!” Yorozuya shouts – which finally, at least, gives Hijikata the impetus he needs to heave himself up, jerking his wrists free of Yorozuya’s grip. He rolls him over onto his back and jams his knee into his stomach to keep him there, ducking out of the way of Yorozuya’s fist as it flies past his head.

“Listen to me, you piece of shit,” Hijikata starts to say – until the moment when he feels a very definite _something_ in Yorozuya’s pants pressing against his shin. “Oh my God,” he mutters, staring down at Yorozuya. “ _You’ve_ got a fucking boner.”

“So what if I do?” Yorozuya yells back at him defiantly, though he’s _definitely_ trying to wriggle his way away from where Hijikata’s leg is pressing against him. “It’s a perfectly natural bodily function! Unlike some people, I’m not such a sour-faced prude about these things! So yes, since it seems so important to you, I’ve got a fucking boner.” 

There’s absolutely nothing Hijikata can say to that, so the deafening silence that follows is broken only by Sougo’s small, self-satisfied _heh_. 

That single _heh_ is, it seems, enough to snap Hijikata back to reality – to the fact that not only are people watching him and Yorozuya roll around on the ground, but they’re also listening in and hanging on to every goddamn word. There is no way in hell that the microphone didn’t pick up Yorozuya’s godawful little speech just now, yelled out at the top of that idiot asshole’s lungs as it was, and so, yeah, that’s it – his life as he knows it is officially over. There’s no coming back from this.

The fact that it’s _this_ ridiculous bullshit that has brought him down – not the Jouishishi, not political machinations, not a sword to the gut taken in defence of an innocent citizen, but a frigging sex scandal in which the only action his dick saw was from a malicious knee – fills him with a fury that burns so hot it almost takes his breath away.

It’s enough to make him feel a little less inclined to remember any earlier qualms he may have had about causing actual injury; he relaxes his leg and releases the pressure against Yorozuya’s – _ugh, God_ – boner, and does his damnedest to ignore Yorozuya’s sigh of relief before bringing his knee back down against said boner with considerably more force than before. Yorozuya’s pained screech is incredibly satisfying, and only a _little_ guilt-inducing. Hell, it’s his own fault for yelling about boners loud enough for all of Edo to hear.

He pushes himself to his feet, trembling with fury and adrenaline, and steps over Yorozuya’s writhing, whimpering form, striding towards the source of all this absolute unadulterated bullshit.

_Fucking Sougo._

If Sougo realises what’s coming, he doesn’t do much to evade it: Hijikata storms over to him, snatches the fucking camcorder out of his hand, and hurls it against the wall of the compound with enough force to shatter it into several thousand pieces. All Sougo does is blink at him in a way that manages to convey supreme contempt, before shrugging slightly and saying, “Nice going, Hijikata-san. You just ruined the stream for a hundred thousand viewers.” 

The only thing Hijikata can muster in response is a few deep breaths, his fists clenched by his sides to stop himself from burying them in Sougo’s face. He’s not going to do that – he’s not going to give Sougo the satisfaction. The camera’s gone now, and that’s the only thing that matters. 

“Take the fucking website down,” he manages to get out, leaning forward and spitting the words directly into Sougo’s face, ignoring the way he grimaces slightly in disgust. “I mean it, Sougo. Take it down, or it’s seppuku for you.”

“And release me from my contract!” Yorozuya yells weakly from somewhere in the background, but Hijikata doesn’t have time to worry about him right now. 

Sougo doesn’t react, except for a slight raise of his eyebrow and then a small sigh, as if in regret. “Wow, Hijikata-san. And here I thought you liked my website. I thought you’d want _more_ videos, considering you’ve been watching them non-stop for the past three days.”

Hijikata’s blood turns to ice in his veins. “Wh-what?”

Sougo shrugs, before reaching into his pocket. Hijikata _really_ doesn’t want to know what he’s got in there, since he suspects he already knows, anyway... and yep, there it is, an itemised list of purchases from Please Die Hijikata (PDH) Industries – _Oh, screw_ you, _Sougo_ – all from his credit card, with the name HIJIKATA, T. neatly printed next to them. 

Well. There’s nothing he can say to that. There’s not really a lot he can do at all except stand there and stare at Sougo as Yorozuya comes limping over, screaming _WHAT?_ and _WHAT THE HELL?_ and variations on that theme, grabbing the papers out of Sougo’s hands and manically rifling through them. 

“Yeah,” Sougo says, looking Hijikata dead in the eyes. “He _really_ likes the one where you guys almost made out in the alley that time.” 

Yorozuya goes from hysterically flailing to stock-still in an instant. “The _what?_ ” he screeches after a moment or two. “The one where we _what?_ ” 

It’s the strangest sensation – Hijikata feels like he’s slowly sinking into the ground, but his head simultaneously feels like it’s about to float off somewhere, and his fingers are numb. Is this what happens when you die of mortification? Is his body shutting itself down, section by section? It’s probably not the worst way to go, at least in terms of the actual physical aspect of it, but it’s kind of unsettling.

He looks at Yorozuya, but not by choice – it’s more a case of Yorozuya moving into his line of vision, staring at him and saying something that doesn’t seem to reach Hijikata’s ears. Oh, now he’s grabbed hold of Hijikata’s shoulders and is shaking him as he yells. There’s something in there about _For the love of God, tell me what happened!_ and something else about _complete bullshit_ and _what the fuck, making out_. 

He looks confused, desperate – and kind of scared. 

Hijikata realises that one of his own hands is tangled in Yorozuya’s collar, that he’s staring into his eyes in the same way that Yorozuya is staring into his. He notices that Yorozuya’s eyes don’t look quite so stupid when they’re conveying an actual human emotion, rather than existing purely to infuriate him with their dead-eyed stare. His mouth opens and closes, but he doesn’t think there are any words coming out.

 _Shirt-grabbing and eyefucking,_ his mind supplies unhelpfully, and... yeah, there really is no other way to describe it, is there?

_Ah, shit._

This wordless bullshit continues on for God knows how long – his fingers twitching in the fabric of Yorozuya’s yukata, Yorozuya’s hand warm and heavy against his own shoulder – and he feels like it could continue indefinitely, were it not for a sudden glimpse of movement he catches in the corner of his eye. He tears his eyes away from Yorozuya’s – it’s much, much more difficult than he wishes it was, and he doesn’t want to think about it – to see that Sougo has pulled out his phone and is once again recording the two of them.

A muscle in Hijikata’s jaw twitches, and he’s pretty sure that his expression could politely be described as ‘crazed’. It has been a _really_ long week, and he is shit out of patience.

 _Does that little shithead have some kind of medical condition where he drops dead if he’s not carrying a recording device? Does it count as murder if I slap the phone out of his hand, given that I now have knowledge of this? Just how good_ are _our lawyers, anyway?_

He’s fucking sick and tired of other people horning in on his shirt-grabbing and eyefucking. If he’s going to do that kind of dumb shit, then it’s going to be for his own benefit only.

He _finally_ manages to shake himself free of Yorozuya’s grip, making a lunge for Sougo’s phone. He grabs it, throws it on the ground and stamps on it, stopping only when it’s completely crushed beneath his heel. There’s really nothing left to do and nothing else to say. All Hijikata wants to do at this point is crawl under his blanket and hope that by the time he wakes up, the Apocalypse will have started, and everyone else will have better things to think about than him and Yorozuya and whatever shirt-grabbing and eyefucking and drunken near-misses in alleyways have been going on between them.

He starts to shamble his way back towards his room, shoulders slumped, head empty, until Sougo helpfully calls out from behind him, “Hijikata-san, the camera’s inside your Tomoe-chan doll.” 

Hijikata stops and wonders briefly if he’s going to get angry – but yeah, no, he’s too dead inside for that. His fingers twitch a little in temptation to go rescue Tomoe-chan, but no, it’s too late, she’s soiled now. Sougo’s had his grubby little fingers all over her. Hijikata isn’t sure he even wants to _look_ at her right now.

It’s without a clear destination in mind that he turns around, heading off towards the main gate – it takes him a moment to realise the haze that’s drifting across his vision isn’t impending death, but is in fact smoke from the fire where Sougo had dropped the match earlier. Glancing up, Hijikata realises that half the outside walkway next to his room is blazing merrily away. 

He supposes he really ought to do something about that, since apparently no one else is going to. But oh, wait – here’s Yamazaki after all, still wearing his boxer shorts, thank God for small blessings, followed by a flock of other pantsless Shinsengumi officers, carrying buckets of water. So it’s not his problem after all. 

_Thank fuck._

Somewhere on the edge of his hearing, Hijikata can make out the sound of Yorozuya yelling, but there’s honestly nothing he wants to say to that jackass right now. Taking a box of cigarettes out of his pocket, Hijikata removes one, lights it, and wanders out the front gate.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the last chapter!!! Thanks so much to everyone, we hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it -- and apologies in advance, this part got long :|

_Two weeks later_

“So that’s it, then?” Gintoki asks, trying to look unconcerned as he faux-idly twirls a dango stick between his fingers.

“Looks like it. Easy come, easy go, danna.” 

It might be just Gintoki’s imagination, but he swears he sees Sougo’s shoulders rise and fall a little as he sighs. 

Not that he can really blame him for sighing. He can blame him for a whole other raft of shitty, shitty things, but the sighing is completely understandable. After all, the guy has lost pretty much everything; apparently JARO had gotten involved somehow, Otsuu-chan had stopped promoting the DVDs, and it had all gone to shit in record time. He’s more or less back to where he started.

Gintoki can’t believe he’s saying this, but....

“Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?”

Not that he wants to get caught up in this unholy mess again. Of course he doesn’t! But it kind of feels like he’s had his life run through the shredder already – one of those fancy ones that double-cuts the paper – and surely there has to be a way for him to at least get some kind of profit out of the humiliation he’s already suffered, right? He signed a contract, dammit! While he was out of his mind on sleep deprivation and probably under some sort of duress, sure, but Sougo hadn’t cared about that when he’d asked to be released from the damn thing a couple of weeks back.

Sougo pops his gum. “The website got pulled after it was found to be in contravention of the Greater Edo Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths. There’s nothing left.” He shrugs. “What can I say? Don’t go up against Tamo-san – that guy’s more powerful than you’d think, and he can hold one hell of a grudge.”

Gintoki can feel his face twitching. It’s pretty much a conditioned response to spending more than thirty seconds in Sougo’s company at this point. “Well, I’m never going to get that opportunity, given that I’m shit poor. What’s he gonna do – take my JUMP collection?”

_... Oh shit, is Tamo-san gonna take my JUMP collection? He can’t do that, can he?!_

Sougo is staring at him with a malice that may or may not be slightly less indifferent than usual – it’s really hard to tell. Gintoki supposes it _was_ a bit of a low blow. Tamo-san had taken advantage of the legal situation and Sougo’s rapidly declining financial status to snatch Sougo’s dream torture mansion out from under his nose, buying it before Sougo could seal the deal. Not that Gintoki feels sorry for him or anything, but he can understand why the kid would be feeling a bit cranky. All things considered, he’s taking this remarkably well.

“I was just trying to give you a heads-up, danna. But I can see that you’ve got everything under control on your end, so I won’t offer you any more advice.”

Gintoki tries to sneer, but it won’t come out right. All his face does is spasm a little. No, the only thing it seems he can do is resign himself to the fact that Sougo may as well be a statue in the desert with a sign saying _Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair,_ for all the use he is to him now.

“Ah, well.” Sougo heaves out another not-sigh, tossing his dango stick down on the plate sitting between them on the bench. “It was fun while it lasted, danna.” 

Gintoki stares at him incredulously. “Fun, my _ass!_ It wasn’t fun at all! Fuck’s sake!”

Sougo lets out a low, sinister chuckle at that, which Gintoki is almost certain he doesn’t want to know the meaning of. “Sure, danna.” 

There are a lot of things Gintoki thinks he could say at this juncture, but in the end, he just decides to stuff another dango or three into his mouth, chewing mightily. Sougo’s acting smug today – and sure, he’s _usually_ acting smug, but today it’s a different kind of smug, and Gintoki doesn’t like it. 

“What’s next for you, then? Hansamu snuff videos?” he asks once he’s swallowed the dango and thrown the stick onto the plate with somewhat more force than is probably necessary. 

“Maybe. That Goemon seems like he could stand to be taken down a peg or two.” Sougo stands, stretching languidly and yawning. “Well. I’m on the clock, so I’ll see you around. Thanks for playing, danna.” 

He starts to move off, seeming in no great hurry to get back to work, then pauses, half-turning back. “Oh,” he says, hand going to his pocket, before he casually tosses something in Gintoki’s direction. “I almost forgot – this is for you. For being such a good sport.”

Gintoki almost chokes as a wad of notes lands on the plate with the empty dango sticks. He picks it up without thinking, rifling through it: forty thousand yen.

Forty thousand – forty _thousand_ –

This is more money than he’s seen since... well, since the last time Sougo casually threw some cash at him like it was no big deal. Was Sougo just carelessly carrying it around in his wallet like some old bit of rubbish?

He looks closer at one of the notes. It passes the first test: it’s not Monopoly money. Hell, it’s not even from one of those notepads where the notepaper looks like money on the back.

With shaking fingers, Gintoki lifts the note up to the light; it trembles as he tilts it back and forth. And – there. A watermark. And there’s a hologram, too. Yukichi-san seems to wink at him as he flutters in the breeze, an alluring look in his finely detailed eye.

 _I’m real,_ he’s saying. _Do with me as you will. Use me to unleash your wildest desires. I’m all yours._

Either Sougo has started up a counterfeiting racket, or this money is genuine. It seems about fifty-fifty, to be honest.

In any case, it doesn’t matter. Gintoki is either the proud new parent of forty thousand yen, or the even prouder parent of forty thousand convincingly fake yen. It’s still not everything he’s owed – not by a long shot – but it’s more than he expected to see, given both Sougo’s current financial situation and his ongoing being-a-giant-asshole situation.

“Don’t spend any of it on Hijikata,” Sougo says as he walks away, waving his hand without turning back.

“As if I would,” Gintoki yells back, injecting his voice with exactly the correct amount of scorn and disgust, but Sougo’s already disappearing around the corner. Normally Gintoki would assume that he was going off to set up a sting to catch him spending counterfeit money, but today, it actually feels like the less likely option.

... Still. He should probably go spend it ASAP, just in case. Heaving himself up off the bench, Gintoki pays for the dango – he should have known that malicious infant would stick him with the bill – and tucks the rest of the money away, then sets off at a stroll, wondering idly as to what he should do with the cash.

Food and booze, obviously. That’s gonna be a big part of it.

He’ll take Kagura and Shinpachi out for yakiniku by way of apology. Shinpachi in particular deserves it – given the amount of money he had to spend on all those DVDs, the poor kid’s flat broke. Of course, being such a stick-in-the-arse straight-man type, he’d turned in all his DVDs the moment the Bakufu issued a recall, rather than giving them to Gin-san for, uh, safekeeping. Hell, he could’ve at least recouped his losses by selling them on the black market! There are days when Gintoki despairs over that boy. It’s like he hasn’t learned a single thing that Gintoki has tried to teach him.

Hmm. By the time Kagura gets done with the yakiniku, he’ll be lucky if he has any money left at all. Maybe he’d be better off spending some of it first, so that that garbage disposal unit masquerading as a small girl can only devour half of his hard-earned cash.

Maybe....

He changes course, dodging cars as he cuts across the road in the complete absence of any kind of pedestrian crossing. The yells coming from drivers as they swerve around him are firmly embedded in the bitchy-to-angry spectrum; there aren’t any cheerful calls of “Oh hey, it’s you!” or “Give that Bakufu dog hell!” or requests for autographs. People who would’ve been kissing his boots a few weeks back are now looking at him like he’s the giant Sadaharu turd smeared across the sole. It’s nice to know just how disposable Gin-san is to these people. A mere two weeks later and they’re already off to the next shiny bauble. 

While he can’t say that he’s _sad_ about the fact that he can now walk the streets unmolested, it’s still a bit of a weird letdown. He misses the tittering women. At least, he misses the time when he thought they were just tittering because they were overwhelmed by the sheer manliness of his presence; once they became more obvious about _why_ they were tittering, it’d all gone downhill.

This whole damn circus has just been balls from go to whoa. Even that elite shitfucker Sasaki has stopped emailing him, and God, he _wants_ to be happy about that, he really does, but it’s just so depressing. He may or may not have even tried sending the guy a message in the hope of getting some kind of ego-boosting response, but... nothing. Not even a one-word reply. 

Sakata Gintoki hit a brand-new low in that moment, in a life already defined by the depths of the lows it was capable of hitting – a life full of abysses and crevasses and shaking his booty around in Saigou’s club for spare change.

He realises that this is a fairly big call to make, considering that his life just recently has been one long series of progressively lower points, all of which are circling the drain of a walking low point that calls itself Hijikata Toushirou. 

Gintoki hasn’t even _seen_ the stupid idiot around for the last two weeks – not since he stalked off out the gates of the Shinsengumi compound following all that… unpleasantness. He’s been doing his best not to think about him either, since Hijikata has made it perfectly clear he wants nothing further to do with him – not that he wants anything to do with Hijikata! But it’s a real shame that apparently his subconscious didn’t get that memo. If nothing else, Shinpachi’s been thrilled that recently Gintoki has been up and washing his own sheets in the morning before he arrives – if only since Gintoki knows Pattsuan’s respect for him is hanging by a thread as it is, and if it snaps, he’ll fall into the yawning abyss of contempt seething below it, and Gintoki can’t have that. He has enough problems already. 

Problems that apparently he is the only one interested in solving. And he hasn’t got many options open to him. 

For one thing, he’s at serious risk of developing RSI. He’s realised that even his lack of shame has a line in the sand that it won’t cross, and that line is right around the point where that shitty bitch Takasugi defeats him in a life-or-death battle because he’s wanked his own wrist into complete uselessness. Of course he’s been jerking off! He can’t actually wander the streets with a perma-stiffy for the rest of his life – there are some things that the sponsors just can’t turn a blind eye to, and a hero with his dick on display is one of them. What can he do besides try to tame the beast?

There had been a particularly dark moment a week or so back when he had returned to the internet teahouse in an attempt to reclaim his evidence, because maybe _looking_ at it would somehow get it out of his system. He’s not too proud to admit that he’d been desperate. Or that he’d lost his ever-loving shit when the nerd behind the counter had informed him that the hard drives are all wiped automatically at the end of every session, and also that he owed approximately 78,000 yen for the many, many days he spent downloading pornography and frightening off the other customers with his incoherent mutterings.

So now he’s just stuck with the hamster wheel of images whirring around in his head, a perfect contraption of infinite motion that just keeps spinning no matter what he tries to distract himself with or how often he humps his futon in the early hours of the morning. It’s getting to the point where he’s seriously considering trying an exorcism for the demon that’s clearly haunting him.

And there sure as hell aren’t times when the _evidence_ is intercut with actual memories – memories of that guy’s hand bunched in his yukata, or his body weight upon Gintoki’s own, or his breath harsh and rapid in his ear. Nothing about how that idiot’s mouth looks strangely kissable when it’s just starting to open up for what is pretty much guaranteed to be some sort of enraged diatribe, or the way that he almost manages to make old sweat and stale cigarette smoke smell not completely disgusting.

Nope, there has definitely been nothing of the sort flitting through his brain on some of the occasions when he’s taken himself in hand. Jacking it to porn is one thing, but doing it to _that_ would just be gross and weird.

In any case, he’s at Gengai’s shop now, and Gintoki relaxes slightly, grateful for the distraction. It’s practically impossible to be horny around Gengai and all his junk.

The shop’s shutter is rolled up, the old man inside tinkering with something that Gintoki knows better than to ask him about.

“Ah, Ginnoji,” Gengai says, looking up when Gintoki’s shadow falls across his work. He gets to his feet and crosses the room to his workbench, picking up a cardboard box and handing it to him. “Here’s your order – ready to go, all fixed up and good as new.” 

“It better be,” Gintoki mutters, taking the box from Gengai. “It’s not going to shoot soy sauce out of any of its orifices, is it?”

He catches the mildest glimpse of regret cross Gengai’s face. “On my honour, Ginnoji. Not this time.”

It’s a wrench, but Gintoki reaches into his yukata to pay him – he supposes if the old coot’s telling the truth and he hasn’t added any condiment-spraying apparatuses, then this kind of behaviour ought to be encouraged. Gin-san’s a big believer in the power of positive reinforcement. Sure, he’d prefer it if the positive reinforcement came in the form of _not_ putting his foot into Gengai’s arse, but he can’t have everything, he supposes. 

He tucks the box into his yukata and heads for home. 

 

***

 

Back at the Snack House, he can _almost_ bring himself to believe that nothing had ever happened: Tama is sweeping, Catherine is scowling, Otose is smoking, and Shinpachi and Kagura are seated at the bar, Shinpachi politely nibbling on some senbei, while Kagura scarfs down rice straight from the cooker. 

But no: all his illusions are shattered the moment he sets foot inside. 

“Have you returned from a date, Gintoki-sama?” Tama asks in a tone of polite inquiry as he closes the door behind him – and really, if the question had come from literally anyone other than Tama, they’d be picking their teeth up off the floor right now. As it is, Gintoki manages to answer her after only a small moan of despair.

“No, because I wasn’t _on_ a date.”

“Ohh. Did you get dumped?” Kagura puts down the rice cooker in order to look at him wisely. “You’re better off without him, Gin-chan. Men are scum.” 

Gintoki heaves himself down at the bar and resists the urge to slam his face into it. “What the hell is wrong with you people?” he asks, though it’s largely a rhetorical question at this point. “What do I have to do to get it through your thick skulls? I _can’t_ get dumped, because I was never going out with anyone in the first place! How can you possibly be this stupid? Gin-san is a free agent, which is just the way he likes it! For shit’s sake!”

“Unfortunate,” Otose says, exhaling a thin stream of cigarette smoke. “It’s good for business to have the cops in your pocket.”

“Well, too bad, because it’s not happening,” Gintoki snaps at her. “You do your own dirty work, you filthy old hag.” 

“Ingrate,” Catherine sneers, taking one of Otose’s cigarettes out of the box and lighting it. “The least you could do is plough a cop or two, after everything Otose-san’s done for you.”

Gintoki can feel his rage gurgling in his throat as his head rolls back on his shoulders. _Why_ had he thought his life had already hit its lowest possible point? _Why_ is there always somewhere lower to sink? “I’m not ploughing any cops!”

“Get ploughed then,” Catherine says, with a moue of distaste. “I don’t know what you’re into.” 

Two things happen then: one, Gintoki actually _does_ slam his head down onto the bar, and two, Shinpachi lets forth an outraged scream, lunging forward to cover Kagura’s ears with his hands – though she seems entirely unperturbed, preoccupied as she is with cleaning out the rice cooker. 

“Excuse me!” he shrieks, his voice even shriller than usual. “But there are children present!”

Gintoki can’t even _look_ at Otose and Catherine right now, and _God_ , he just _knows_ Tama is adding all this to her database, so instead he turns his head where it rests on the bar, directing his ire elsewhere. 

“Why are you even here?” he barks at Kagura once he feels the power of speech return to him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Soyo’s this weekend?”

“Yeah.” Kagura nods enthusiastically. “I’m waiting to get picked up. Soyo-chan’s sending a palanquin.”

“A _palan_ –” Gintoki cuts himself off just short of screaming, because really, that’s all he needs. Kagura riding around Kabukichou in a palanquin. As if she doesn’t already act like she owns the place. Much more of this and she’ll start getting ideas. 

Ugh, _why_ had he thought coming back here would be a good idea? He’d _way_ rather the lot of them were harassing him for money than making him listen to any of the disgusting things they’ve just been saying to him. If this whole idiotic situation is some sort of karmic retribution for something he did in a past life, then he’d really like to know what it is that Past Life Gintoki did, because clearly it was an absolute doozy. It seems horribly unfair that he has to suffer so grievously for Past Life Gintoki’s sins, without having any memory of at least having enjoyed their fruits.

He stares down at the bar before him, cataloguing the knots and swirls of the old, worn wood even as the bickering of the others washes over him. Maybe if he just sits here quietly and does his best to be inconspicuous, they’ll find something else to talk about. 

Anything – literally anything else, as long as the word ‘ploughing’ doesn’t feature. An excruciatingly detailed discussion about _Thirty Entrepreneurs Under Thirty_ is sounding fab right about now, provided that nobody brings up that shitty little life-wrecker. Hell, he’d happily listen to anything from Shinpachi’s regular rotation of harangues, or let Kagura slap him around a bit for whatever made-up reason she feels like. Anything would be better than this.

His plan to blend in with the furniture, at least, seems to be going his way: the tide of conversation has turned away from his fictional sexcapades and towards slightly safer topics. Slightly, because any conversation involving any of these idiots is likely to end up nowhere good, but at least they shouldn’t end up at his dick.

He half-listens as Catherine butts her ugly mug into the conversation. “Kagura-chan, when do we get to go to the palace with you and your fancy friends, eh?”

Kagura’s answer leaves no room for misinterpretation; Catherine’s resultant stream of screeched insults is not particularly pleasant, but in comparison to most of the other things he’s been hearing the past few weeks, it’s almost soothing. It’s _normal_. 

Maybe things really can go back to the way they were, and this whole affair will just be like some horrible nightmare that he can pretend never happened. This shitty episode has unearthed parts of his psyche that he’s left buried for damn good reasons! 

But unfortunately for him, the crap Sougo had said back in the compound about _making out_ and _alleyway_ and _that time_ had shaken loose some stuff he’s been pretty damn careful to suppress the hell out of up until now. He can’t recall the specifics in any kind of detail, but he _does_ remember having woken up with the queasy sense of unease of having _almost_ made a huge mistake, and that he needed to be _slightly_ more abusive than usual to Hijikata when they bumped into each other later that day, and feeling _pretty_ relieved that as far as he could tell, Hijikata didn’t seem to think there was anything amiss. 

That, of course, has all been blown to hell now, since he hadn’t known there was a sadistic freak with a mobile phone recording his every move at the time; less still had he ever suspected that even if there _was_ , that Hijikata would ever come to see the video evidence of his drunken transgressions. 

_Fine. Whatever._ Now Hijikata knows about it, but he’s apparently decided he doesn’t _want_ to know, so that’s fine. Fine! Hijikata has decided to disappear off the face of the earth rather than talk to him ever again, and that’s fine. 

Yeah, this is better. Gintoki’d pushed his luck as far as it could reasonably go when he’d told that idiot about being the Shiroyasha. Maybe he’d like to give Hijikata an itemised list of all the other shit he did during the war while he’s making his job easier for him. This is different, of course: Hijikata can’t arrest him for having a boner, though Gintoki has no doubt that he’d sure as hell try if he happened to stumble across him in a bad enough mood. 

But the thing that gets him – that _really_ sticks in his craw – is just how little he needs this. He’s got a good thing going, right? Sure, not everything is perfect, but chasing him for the rent gives Otose something to do in her twilight years (he read somewhere that the elderly have to keep active); the kids are doing fine, even if you wouldn’t know it from Shinpachi’s endless bitching; Tama’s become a real good time girl under his tutelage; and sure, Catherine might _pretend_ to despise him, but he’s seen that glint in her eye when she thinks no one’s looking. So why’s he running the risk of messing it all up by trying to hook up with some idiot government official with dumb hair and a major attitude problem?

_Not that I would do anything like that._

... Ah, who the hell is he kidding? He absolutely would, if things were different. Just the once, to work off the nervous energy and clear the air, and maybe satisfy his curiosity as to just what kind of lay that asshole would be. Would he be stoic? Coy? Enthusiastic? Would he keep manfully silent the whole time, or would he be a screamer?

_... Shit._

He glances up at the TV in the corner of the room, seeking distraction; he’s met with an eyeful of semi-naked Shinsengumi gorilla, chatting away amiably with Tamo-san. Gintoki catches something about _sparking joy_ and _KonIsaoing,_ whatever the hell that is, and decides that it would make his life easier if he just remained ignorant. He’s less disturbed by the gently swaying mosaic on the screen than he is by the Shinsengumi uniform jacket and cravat above it; it just reminds him of the exact thing he’s trying to forget.

Maybe he needs a walk to clear his head. Otose’s bar is starting to feel a little claustrophobic; Shinpachi has decided to wade into the middle of Kagura and Catherine’s yelling match, and that’s never a good sign. The kid’s keeping his cool right now, but it’s just scientific fact that he’ll be bellowing louder than either of them within the next sixty seconds.

He slides down off the stool, hoping for a subtle exit, but he knows that kind of thing’s impossible when you’re surrounded by vultures.

In the end, though, it’s the one non-vulture in the room who comes to pick at his carcass.

“Have fun with your boyfriend, Gintoki-sama,” Tama says, and he freezes where he stands. Who the hell has managed to fuck up her programming so badly that she can’t remember that he just _told_ her that he has nothing to do with that jerk? A little voice in the back of his mind suggests that maybe all those times he deliberately told her whatever bullshit came into his head have come back to bite him in the ass, and it’s entirely his fault that her perception of human relationships is now permanently screwy.

“For the last time, he’s not my boyfriend,” he hisses as he starts to edge towards the door, hand twitching towards his bokutou out of pure stress reflex.

“Maybe you should consider it,” Otose says, and damn it, the old hag is definitely smirking. “If not for my sake, then your own. There are all kinds of benefits to dating a cop, and I don’t just mean the steady paycheque.”

He’s being baited. He’s definitely being baited. Well, too bad – he’s not going to fall for it.

“Like what?” Shinpachi asks.

Sweat breaks out across Gintoki’s forehead.

_Shit! Why does he have to be so dedicated to his straight-man routine? That statement definitely did not require a follow-up question! How can I be expected to feed and look after someone who so clearly doesn’t deserve it?!_

“The handcuffs can come in useful,” Otose murmurs wistfully, and no, no, this is _not_ happening.

“Oh!” Kagura’s eyes widen. “Like if some smelly yakuza breaks in and jumps into your bed during the night, and you have to make sure he’s restrained while you check him for concealed weapons?”

“Something like that,” Otose replies vaguely, and holy shit, that is _it_ – Gintoki was going to give her at least some of the rent he owes, but screw that for a joke. He needs every last yen in order to buy enough alcohol to scrub the memory of what she just said from his mind.

Tama is staring politely at him, and he can practically hear her circuits whirring as she computes this new and exciting knowledge. Who knows what kinds of conclusions she’s coming to? Why is she apparently coming to those conclusions about poor innocent Gin-san, rather than the randy old goat behind the bar?

Catherine leans against the bar, a speculative gleam in her eye. “Do you still have those handcuffs, Otose-san?”

“Bye! I’m leaving!” Gintoki yells, and he barges through the door without a backwards glance.

If anyone says anything in response, it’s lost behind the slam of the door. Thank _fuck_.

He wanders down the street a little faster than usual, no specific destination in mind except for somewhere that’s away from _them_. How the hell did he end up with the world’s worst matchmakers as his nearest and dearest? It makes no sense.

_Sake. Sake will fix this._

And if it doesn’t actually _fix_ it, well, at least it’ll make it seem a little more bearable. He has enough money, for once. Part of him wonders if he should hunt down Hasegawa so that he can share in his spoils, but really, he just wants to be alone for a while. Besides, he doesn't think Hasegawa is the best person for him to hang out with while he’s trying to sort out his thoughts. The guy can get weirdly clingy.

The sun begins to dip below the horizon as Kabukichou’s lights flicker to life one by one, and his stride becomes a little more purposeful. It’s still warm out, but the humidity is nowhere near as disgustingly overpowering as it was a couple of weeks back; the evening air is almost pleasant. It’s enough to get him starting to think that he might be able to reclaim his sanity from the maelstrom of shit that has been his life over these past few weeks.

There’s a particular izakaya he has in mind – one where the owner is reasonably forgiving of his ever-growing tab, and he therefore feels more inclined to actually pay some of it off, now that he can – and he’s almost moving at a run now, desperate to drown himself in something other than cheap plonk. He’s not going to waste his newfound riches on Dom Peri – he’s not quite _that_ dumb – but he might treat himself to something a step or two up from the paint thinner he normally buys.

He stumbles through the door and practically falls onto a stool, signalling to the barman before he’s even managed to settle himself comfortably.

“A bottle of your third-cheapest sake,” he says, and the barman whistles, impressed. He pays for it up front and everything. Is this what it’s like to live the high life?

He throws back the first cup, appreciating the way that it doesn’t strip the top layer of his oesophagus on the way down.

The second cup is just touching his lips when he happens to glance down to the other end of the bar. He doesn’t actually _choke,_ per se, but it’s really kind of a technicality; he somehow manages to inhale half the contents of the cup while spraying the other half across the bar, and while he knows that he should be upset at the wasted booze, he’s too busy trying to clear sake from his sinuses while simultaneously cursing his godawful luck.

Because of course the one person he really doesn’t want to see right now is sitting down the other end of the bar, staring at him like a stunned mullet. Of _course_. Why _wouldn’t_ he be?

Gintoki is screaming internally. Is he also screaming externally? He doesn’t _think_ so, but it’s really hard to tell. 

In the absence of any kind of higher functions or motor skills, he keeps on gawking at Hijikata instead. The guy’s slouched over a bowl of something revolting-looking, but he starts to straighten up as Gintoki stares at him, apparently caught in some no-man’s-land between his usual upright bearing and a desire to become one with the barstool. He’s wearing his day-off yukata, which brings out his eyes –

_The fuck?! No, it doesn’t!_

And there’s a bit of what looks like mayonnaise caught on the corner of his mouth, which Gintoki has the sudden urge to wipe away –

_But only because it looks stupid! Definitely not because I want to touch his face or anything like that. Oh my God._

Hijikata is gripping his drink hard enough that the cup is in clear danger of cracking. It’s obvious that something’s got to give sooner rather than later, and Gintoki’s pretty sure that his own fragile sanity isn’t going to hold out much longer. This is just – _auuuggh_.

And okay, it’s Hijikata who’s giving in – he’s definitely moving to get up, chugging the last of his drink and then swivelling around on his stool, one foot on the floor, eyes fixed firmly downwards, jaw tight.

This is it. Gintoki knows he should feel relieved, and he does, but also... isn’t this entirely wrong? This isn’t how these things go. There’s a weird kind of finality to this, and he doesn’t like it. 

“Stay,” Gintoki blurts, before his brain can catch up with his mouth. Hijikata freezes; he glances up at Gintoki in surprise, the action clearly involuntary, before averting his gaze again.

“Stay,” Gintoki says again. “Finish your meal.” He tries to keep his tone light, and mostly succeeds; if his voice cracks a little... well, whatever. It’s the least shameful thing he’s had to deal with recently. He’s more concerned about the sudden realisation that the barman has probably seen the videos and is putting two and two together in his head right now, but even that doesn’t seem quite so terrible as it once would’ve. He’s humiliated himself enough times in his life that this rates fairly low in the grand scheme of things, and the fact that he’s actually paying for his drinks tonight means that the barman _probably_ won’t sell him out to Sougo.

For a long moment, Hijikata hesitates, stuck somewhere between standing and sitting, and Gintoki wonders if he’s created some kind of fatal paradox in his brain where he can’t leave, since that would be basically admitting that Gintoki has any influence over his actions, but he also can’t stay since that would be doing what Gintoki just told him to do. 

Gintoki watches as Hijikata hesitates a moment longer, before planting his other foot on the floor and standing up. And – no, this is all wrong. Gintoki knows that he’ll be lucky if Hijikata _ever_ forgives him for what went down in the Shinsengumi compound a couple of weeks ago, but at least he could scream a few insults in his face or try to punch him in the gut. A world in which Hijikata gets up and walks out when Gintoki enters the room instead of pointlessly fighting him for the right to claim it as his own... well, it sounds pretty fucking dull.

Gintoki’s standing and walking towards him before he can fully comprehend his own actions. He claps a hand on Hijikata’s shoulder, and, while a small part of him is way too happy about the physical contact, he’s mostly just annoyed.

“Oi, dickhead.” His hand on Hijikata’s shoulder looks deceptively gentle, but he’s exerting some pretty firm pressure. “Sit your ass down and eat your goddamn food.”

Hijikata glares at him, and it almost feels like old times for a moment – but then Hijikata looks away, shaking off his hand and taking another step towards the door.

 _Fine,_ Gintoki thinks, reaching into his yukata. _Fucking fine. Make me inflate my emergency life preserver then._

He’d sort of hoped he’d be able to save it for a rainy day, but now Hijikata is forcing his hand, the complete asshole. Gintoki pulls the box he’d picked up from Gengai out from the folds of his clothes, slamming it down on the bar. 

Hijikata half-turns towards him at the noise, and Gintoki makes sure to gaze off over his shoulder, waving his hand lazily as if it’s all the same to him. “It’s for you. Fucking take it, you miserable prick.” 

He might be trying to hide it, but Gintoki sees the flash of curiosity in Hijikata’s eyes. He doesn’t think he’s ever actually _given_ Hijikata anything before – unless ‘a good smack in the teeth’ counts as a thing – so he can see why he might be slightly taken aback. As it is, the stupid idiot just stands there staring at him though, resolutely _not_ picking up the box, and in the end, Gintoki runs out of patience.

“You have a really nasty, suspicious mind, you know that, Hijikata-kun?” he says as he opens the box, reaching inside.

“Here.” He pulls Tomoe-chan out of the box and thrusts it towards Hijikata, darting a glance at him out of the corner of his eye as he does so. It’s absolutely worth it: Hijikata blinks stupidly, his mouth falling open as he tries to form words.

“What – how –”

A small thrill of triumph runs through Gintoki at that – finally got the bastard to speak, even if it’s even less articulate than usual – and he smiles in self-satisfaction. “I rescued her from your room after the fire was put out – you’re welcome, by the way – and took her to old man Gengai to get her fixed.”

It seems like Hijikata has suddenly remembered that he’s going for the whole cool-and-silent thing – he doesn’t reply to Gin-san’s extremely generous and heart-warming gesture, instead merely staring at the doll with what he probably thinks is indifference, but which is actually the kind of creepy intensity that only an otaku can generate.

Gintoki would be lying if he didn’t admit that he’s starting to sweat just a _little_. If this doesn’t work, he’s going to be shit out of ideas, and a Gintoki who’s shit out of ideas is a Gintoki who poses a significant threat to his own reputation.

_Come on, Tosshi. Now’s your time to shine!_

Still nothing.

He tries again, pushing the doll a little closer, being careful to only hold her by her feet. “Sorry, Hijikata-kun – I know she was your one to preserve, and she’s not _exactly_ in mint condition anymore, but at least she doesn’t have a camera up her skirt now.”

Hijikata stares down at it, and Gintoki _swears_ he sees his fingers twitch – he still doesn’t take it, though.

_Fuck! What does it take to get this guy to accept a present?_

Maybe the problem is that he’s being too nice? Maybe Hijikata can only interact with people who are on his own level, i.e., dumb jerks.

“The polite thing to do would be to say, ‘Thank you ever so much, Sakata-shi’,” Gintoki says, and hoo boy, now he’s _really_ pushing things. He holds his stare while Hijikata’s face twitches like he’s thirty seconds away from choking on his own outrage. 

_Come on. Take the bait, you stupid prick. Let’s get this over with and go back to hating each other in a wholesome, healthy way... ugh, he’s not taking the bait._

_Why_ isn’t he taking the bait? If he’d just take it, then things could go back to how they used to be, instead of... of... whatever _this_ is. 

“Fine,” Gintoki says, beginning to pull his hand back. “Fine, if you don’t _want_ her –”

“I didn’t say that,” Hijikata snaps, _finally_ grabbing the stupid doll from his fingers and stuffing it somewhere inside his yukata. Gintoki doesn’t _mean_ for his eyes to follow the movement, and he certainly doesn’t _mean_ to swallow as he does so, but in any case, it’s all over in a moment, and then his eyes are back on Hijikata’s belligerent stare.

Gintoki points to the half-finished dog food at the end of the bar. “Sit. Eat.”

Hijikata just keeps glaring at him – but Gintoki meets his gaze, and after a long moment he gives in and sits down with a sullen sigh, staring at his disgusting bowl of mayonnaise again. And... that’s new. Gintoki’s _never_ seen Hijikata give in like that. He’s got what he wanted, but he’s not sure if he’s happy or not.

Still. It’s better than the alternative.

“Great!” he says with forced cheer. The barman is studiously cleaning glasses at the other end of the bar; Gintoki calls him over. “Hey, barkeep! A bottle of your second-cheapest sake for the grumpy bastard over here.”

This startles a surprised _heh_ from said grumpy bastard. “Second cheapest? I’m flattered. But don’t run this fine establishment into the ground on my account, Yorozuya.”

_Success!_

Gintoki grins and thumps Hijikata on the back, eliciting an enraged splutter. “Who said anything about running this place into the ground? Tonight, Gin-san is paying for his drinks, and he’ll even pay for yours too.”

He produces a ten thousand yen note with a flourish, and Hijikata’s eyes widen; as Hijikata opens his mouth, he cuts in, “It’s legit! I swear!”

Probably, anyway. A cop gave him the money, so that counts, right?

Hijikata stares at him, something that looks suspiciously like a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth for the briefest of moments, before he frowns again and turns back to his food. “Do whatever you like. I don’t care.”

Gintoki exhales slowly, only just now noticing that his heart is banging against his sternum. He ducks away from Hijikata just long enough to grab his own drink from the other end of the bar – he’s not so filthy rich that he can just let a bottle of third-cheapest sake go unfinished – before he hurries back and slides onto the stool next to that surly fuck.

Things aren’t _fixed,_ but at least they’re not complete shit anymore. He’ll take it.

 

***

 

He’s not three sheets to the wind yet, but he’s getting there. One sheet to the wind. Maybe one sheet and a pillowcase.

But it’s fine, it’s cool, because he’s not the only one. The lightweight seated next to him is definitely looking somewhat flushed in the cheeks, leaning against the bar for balance a little more than would be strictly necessary if he were stone-cold sober.

They haven’t been talking much, but it’s okay – it’s more of a comfortable, manly silence, punctuated by the occasional grunted word or attempt to get the barman’s attention. He even got an unsolicited ‘thanks’ out of Hijikata at one point – presumably it was in regards to the doll, but maybe it was for the drinks, or just the fact that he’s been allowed to bask in the glory of Gin-san’s presence. Whatever the case, Gintoki’s not going to get completely shitfaced tonight – he wants to make sure he retains enough presence of mind to remember the fact that Hijikata _thanked_ him come morning. If that idiot cop thinks he’s living _that_ one down, he’s an even bigger dumbarse than Gintoki thought.

Still. Manly silences can only last so long before they start to get boring, especially when they’re being shared with Hijikata. It’s _weird_.

“Soooooo.” He nudges Hijikata with his elbow, and man, the guy is predictable – there’s the irritated frown, right on cue. “Where the hell have you been? I haven’t seen you around since... well, you know.”

He didn’t actually mean to bring up their last... encounter; his mouth had got ahead of him, and then there was no choice but to finish what he’d started. He wouldn’t blame Hijikata if he just didn’t answer at all.

But Hijikata snorts out a bitter little laugh, exhaling a stream of cigarette smoke. “Kondou-san forced me to take a two-week holiday. He made me go to the beach.”

“Oh, wow. My condolences,” Gintoki says, and the sentiment is genuine.

No wonder the guy looks like deep-fried ass – Gintoki can’t think of anything worse for him than enforced inactivity with nothing to do but stew in his own juices, especially given everything that’s happened recently. Gintoki can imagine him sitting there rigidly in his deckchair, just _waiting_ for someone to pocket a seashell or drop their litter on the beach, so that he has an excuse to whip out the handcuffs and grind the poor sod’s face into the sand.

Hijikata hums noncommittally, and this is heading rapidly back into monosyllabic grunts territory; Gintoki needs to do something to salvage things while he still can.

“Speaking of the gorilla – I saw him being interviewed on the telly before I came here, and he was naked. But not _naked_ naked, like he decided to get his kit off because he was shitfaced and horny – it was more deliberately naked, like it was a fashion choice. Tamo-san seemed pretty taken with it.” He pauses for a moment. “What the hell was that all about?”

In the moment that follows, Gintoki swears he sees Hijikata’s eye convulsively twitching. 

“Trust me,” he says eventually. “You don’t want to know.” 

_Fair enough._

Gintoki nabs a cigarette from Hijikata’s pack, ignoring the startled “Hey!” which inevitably follows. Well, too bad. It’s Hijikata’s own fault for leaving the box sitting there all open and wanton on the bar, practically waiting for someone to come along and ravish it. Gin-san has been buying this asshole’s drinks all night – he even switched to buying him the third-cheapest stuff, once said asshole threw a scowly little shitfit after realising that Gintoki was buying him cheaper booze than he was buying for himself – so really, it’s only fair.

He sticks the cigarette in his mouth triumphantly, realising a little too late that he has no way of lighting it. His only option is to ask around for a light – he’s sure as hell not going to ask Hijikata for one – but even asking the bartender seems like an admission of defeat. He’ll just have to leave it there unlit and hope that he can sell the ‘I totally meant to do this’ vibe.

He chews a little on the end of it. It’s not very pleasant.

... Yeah, this is no good.

How long can he leave it in his mouth before surreptitiously removing it? Man, he really didn’t think this shit through –

A _click_ startles him from his thoughts; he blinks and sees the flame of a familiar, ridiculous cigarette lighter before him.

He leans in without thinking, lighting the cigarette and taking a great big drag, and God, that feels so good. He certainly doesn’t cough at all – but if he _did,_ it would be the stupid legal department’s fault, because they’re the ones who only let him smoke occasionally.

He turns his head to look at his... drinking buddy, and it’s obviously the way that his eyes are watering after his not-coughing fit that makes Hijikata look, somehow, really good in the glow of his stupid mayonnaise lighter. It makes Gintoki want to wax poetic about candlelight and limpid cerulean pools and all kinds of awful bullshit – the flickering flame and deep shadows are enough to elevate Hijikata to at least an eight – but even he can realise that that would be a terrible idea. The last thing either of them needs is for him to make some sort of embarrassing drunken declaration of... visual appreciation. They’re back on speaking terms again, which is the important thing, and Gintoki needs to bury his stupid weird unrequited lust like some sort of reasonable adult before he manages to fuck things up between them any further. No, all of that stuff gets locked away in the vault, along with all the other shit he really doesn’t need to think about on a daily basis if he wants to conduct himself like a normal human being. 

Anyway, the lighter has gone out and Hijikata has tucked it away again, so the whole thing is moot. Gintoki pours himself another cup of sake, throwing it back, before staggering to his feet. Time to get out of here while the going’s good.

“That’s me done for the night,” he says, and he totally, absolutely, one hundred per cent means it – he’s definitely not going to another place after this, and that place will definitely not be a twenty-four-hour pachinko parlour. Just because he’s feeling lucky and just because the deafening din of the balls rattling through the machines and the seizure-inducing flash of the neon lights will help to block out the sound of his own thoughts is no reason to go indulge in a bit of harmless time-passing. Yeah, nah, he’s _definitely_ not going to do anything like that.

He goes to reach for his wallet, only to find that Hijikata has beaten him to the punch, throwing a couple thousand yen down on the bar to cover their last round. 

_Thanks,_ he wants to say, but the word sticks in his throat. He’s been paying for the drinks all night despite not being on a fat government salary, so really, this is the least Hijikata can do. 

... Oh, and now _he’s_ standing up too, crushing out his half-finished cigarette in the overly full ashtray and nodding to the bartender. 

“Not going to stay and celebrate not being at the beach anymore like the sour bastard you are?” Gintoki asks him, which only elicits a noncommittal shrug out of Hijikata. 

“Not today.” 

They stand there awkwardly for a moment, before Gintoki turns and heads for the door. The sound of footsteps echoes behind him, and it’s all he can do not to let out a frustrated huff.

Why is this stupid prick leaving with him? Oh, well – they can split up once they get outside.

Except that they can’t, because now they _are_ outside, and Hijikata’s not going anywhere. If anything, he’s even closer than before, walking beside him instead of behind him. He’s just being all silent and mysterious, and wow, is it annoying.

Well, this is just frigging fantastic. He appears to have acquired another stalker.

_For crying out – I can’t find the idiot for two weeks, and then when I finally do find him, I can’t get rid of him?_

Gintoki takes an irritated puff on his cigarette. If this keeps up, he’s going to lose the pleasant buzz he’s been building up over the course of the past couple of hours, and he’s going to be super annoyed if he wasted all that money on second-rate sake for nothing.

They continue their amble along the street, and something resembling panic begins to kindle in Gintoki’s gut. Just how long is this going to last? At what point will Hijikata realise that they’re not actually going to the same place? Oh God, this is going to be _so_ awkward once they finally do split off in different directions. Did Hijikata not get the memo that things are supposed to be back to normal? This whole ‘walking around in silence together’ thing is not normal! Especially given that there’s a part of Gintoki that reaaally wants to just veer ever so slightly towards Hijikata, to let the back of his hand brush casually against the sleeve of his yukata, and argh, this is the worst and he hates everything.

He could pass that off as accidental, right? It wouldn’t be the start of yet another terrible downward spiral in his life, right??

... Yeah, it absolutely would be. It’d be shitty, and Hijikata would freak out, and the whole sorry shambles would start over again – except that Gintoki would have nobody to blame but himself, and this time everything would be perma-fucked. 

It’s at this moment that he recognises the building across the street – a pachinko parlour that he’s well acquainted with, its bright lights calling to him, the balls rattling out their siren song.

That’s what he’ll do. He’ll go in there – not because he wants to play, but just because he knows it’s one place that Hijikata will never follow him. It’s the perfect crime! 

“Well, this is my stop,” he says, jerking his thumb in the direction of the pachinko parlour.

What the hell is this? He’s voluntarily removing himself from a situation before it becomes regrettable? The two of them had a relatively civilised conversation, and didn’t yell at each other once? He somehow, miraculously, has managed to keep his mouth, hands and dick under control while in Hijikata’s presence for an extended period of time?

Gintoki blinks, and feels a sense of wonder unfurl within him.

Is this it? Has he achieved emotional growth? Has he transcended the shell of his former self and attained enlightenment? 

It’s the new Gin-san! No more wanking over inappropriate porn, no more tantrums at the internet teahouse. No more getting black-out drunk and waking up to find Sadaharu about to use his prostrate form as a toilet. No more gambling away all his money. He’s going to eat at least one vegetable per week! He’s going to flush the toilet after he uses it! Hell, he might even pay Kagura and Shinpachi!

This is great! This is amazing! This is the dawning of a new era of responsible behaviour and emotional maturity! This is – this is –

This is Hijikata looking first one way up the alley and then the other, before stepping towards him with his eyebrows drawn together and his mouth set in a thin, determined line? This is Hijikata’s hand reaching up towards his face to yank the cigarette out of his mouth and toss it to one side? 

_Hey, I hadn’t finished smoking that! What the fuck!_

Gintoki opens his mouth to ask the shitty bastard just what the hell he thinks he’s doing, but the words get stuck in his throat – because there’s another mouth pushing up against his own, lips pressing messily against him even as fingers run up into his hair and a hand grabs onto his shoulder.

The – the _fuck?!_

 _This_ is how Gin-san is rewarded for taming his wild and carefree boner and trying to grow the fuck up? By being given everything that he _had_ wanted – he can admit that now, because, shitty and desperate and inexperienced and one-sided as this kiss may be, it’s fucking _amazing_ – and then having to give it all up? Because that’s what he’s going to have to do, if he’s going to continue ‘being sensible’ and ‘not risking the pretty good thing he has going’ – and also, he _really_ doesn’t want those smug fucks back at the Snack House to actually end up being _right_ about literally anything to do with this whole farce. 

He _may_ be kissing back now, just a little – but what else can be expected of him? It’d be awkward if he just stood there. And if one of his arms has wrapped itself around Hijikata’s waist and is pulling him closer, well, that’s just a reflex.

... Hijikata really isn’t that great of a kisser. Gintoki supposes that it’s to be expected, what with the whole married-to-the-Shinsengumi thing he has going. But he’s enthusiastic, and he’s pressed up hard against him, and yeah, maybe Gin-san’s boner hasn’t been tamed quite so much as he thought.

_Shit._

He pulls back reluctantly – he may have to push Hijikata a little to get him to stop macking on him – and takes a moment to think.

Hijikata’s eyes are closed, his chest moving with rapid breaths. Gintoki can feel his pulse under his fingertips where his hand still rests on Hijikata’s waist, can feel the warmth of him through the fabric of his yukata. It’s so much better than anything he saw during those horrible days at the internet teahouse, and the unfairness of it all makes him want to cry. Why _now?!_ Why is he determined to test Gin-san’s self-control?

“Uh, Hijikata-kun,” he begins. He has no idea what he wants to say, besides _oh my God, I hate you so much, go to hell,_ and even he knows that that will lead nowhere good. “I – ah –”

Hijikata opens his eyes, and shit. The expression in those eyes is indecipherable – there’s lust, and irritation, and God knows what else – and then they narrow a little and yeah, definitely irritation. 

“Not that I don’t, uh, appreciate this or anything,” Gintoki manages to get out, “but is there, like, a reason you’re doing this now, or –”

Hijikata frowns at him, his jaw tightening. “You called me a sour-faced prude.”

He opens his mouth to deny he’s ever said any such thing before remembering, oh yeah, he did say that, during that whole episode where they were sitting on each other in the Shinsengumi compound, after he’d given up trying to control the stupid raging hard-on the whole situation had been giving him and not even Sougo filming them could do anything to dampen his spirits. 

_Holy shit, has he been stewing about that for two fucking weeks?!_

“Oh my God,” he says, “ _that_ was your takeaway from that whole disaster? What the fuck are your priorities like, Hijikata-kun?” A second thought occurs to him. “And wait, are you kissing me because you _want_ to, or to prove a point?”

Hijikata scowls. “Can’t it be both?”

“Not really –” he starts to say, before Hijikata leans forward again, his breath hot against his face.

“Gintoki.”

The bottom drops out from his stomach. “Eh?”

“... Shut the fuck up.”

That’s all the warning he has before Hijikata’s mouth is on his again, hard and forceful. It’s sort of like coming under attack, and he has the horrible feeling that Hijikata has been strategising the whole encounter since they were in the izakaya. Well, he’s glad to see Hijikata approaches kissing with the same grim-faced determination as he approaches most other things. He’d be disappointed otherwise. 

Hijikata presses up even closer against Gintoki, if that’s even possible, and, oh. He’s hard. Gintoki runs his hand experimentally along Hijikata’s side, brushing his thumb over his hipbone, and Hijikata groans into his mouth.

... Okay, fuck emotional growth. Enlightened Gin-san has had his day in the sun; Horny Slut Gin-san is back, and this time, he’s gonna do it right.

Of course he is. Right?

“Fine, fine,” he says, pulling back, his laughter sounding too loud in the confines of the alleyway. His hands _may_ be shaking just a little. Okay! Now’s the time to draw on his vast well of sexy knowledge! Now’s the time for him to put all the years of reading _To-Rabu-Ru_ to good use! It definitely hasn’t been so long since he last did this kind of thing that he’s totally forgotten how to make anyone he damn well feels like swoon into his arms like a fainting goat! 

He opens his mouth to say something incredibly suave, and – oh. Oh, shit.

He suddenly realises with devastating clarity what’s going to come out, and it is _not_ suave. It’s the polar opposite of suave. He desperately tries to stop his mouth from producing any kind of sound, but it’s back on its ‘I’m going to say whatever I damn well feel like’ bullshit again. Ah, _fuck_ –

“I, ha ha, wasn’t lying about that whole ‘jerking off to you non-stop’ thing in that note I sent you.”

_Shut the fuck up! Abort! Abort!_

His fingers fiddle with the edge of his sleeve, his eyes darting madly between Hijikata’s face and the wall behind him. “My dreams _are_ all of Hijikata-kun. You’ve been, uh, featuring prominently.”

 _What did I just_ say _about shutting the fuck up?! Oh my God._

Hijikata’s eyes widen slightly, and that’s it, it’s all over... if by ‘all over’ he’s referring to Hijikata’s position in relation to himself, because holy crap, apparently talk of jerking off makes the guy handsy as fuck. Any other stupid things he might be saying are muffled by Hijikata’s mouth as it once again crashes into his own, and okay, this is pretty good.

 _And... hey, hang on,_ Gintoki thinks, a sudden bolt of realisation arcing through his brain as he opens his mouth wider and slides his hand down to the curve of Hijikata’s ass. If he’s been spending the past few weeks jerking off with wild abandon, and if this idiot is _this_ eager for them to get it on... then it seems a pretty fair assumption that Hijikata must have also been spending the past two weeks getting hot and heavy with himself in paroxysms of sexual desperation, in between harassing crowds of unsuspecting beachgoers. 

Gin-san is an excellent multitasker – he can play a devastatingly good game of tonsil hockey while also internally having a good laugh at the realisation that this asshole has been just as sad and desperate as... well, Gin-san himself.

 _Ha._ They’re back on an even playing field now, where they’re both losers who’ve spent two weeks getting themselves off to elaborate sexual fantasies instead of just calling up the other one and asking if they want to fuck. They’re both incredibly dumb... though Hijikata is dumber, of course.

Well, just because Hijikata caught him off guard just now is no reason to let that situation stand now that he’s gathered his wits. He might still secretly think Hijikata _is_ kind of a sour-faced prude – albeit one who’s managed to find the balls to actually make a move, which, he has to admit, is at least mildly impressive – but he can deal with that later. For now, he grabs him without warning – one hand on the wrist, the other on the waist – and spins him round so that _he’s_ the one with his back against the wall.

Hijikata sputters indignantly, but it’s a good look for him, and Gintoki takes a moment to drink it all in. If there’s one thing that those pictures were right about, it’s the pink flush that’s slowly creeping its way across Hijikata’s cheeks. And the way that he tilts his head ever so slightly, baring his throat. And how good he looks when his clothes and hair are all dishevelled. And the... okay, a whole lot of stuff.

It’s all so much better in the flesh, though. He can hear the rapid panting of his breath, feel the heat of his skin beneath his fingertips, smell the faint hint of sweat and alcohol and cigarettes. It’s all he can do not to bury his face into his semi-exposed collarbone and take a giant whiff.

He doesn’t do that, however. Instead he leans forward, slamming his hand onto the wall next to Hijikata’s head. It’s a classic kabedon, but what’s interesting is the way Hijikata swallows heavily, his pulse ticking at the side of his throat, mouth falling slightly open. Gintoki realises he really shouldn’t be surprised – it’s exactly the kind of shoujo manga cliché that _would_ work on the type of asshole who prefers Magazine to JUMP.

Gintoki’s _just_ leaning in again, enjoying taking his time and making Hijikata wait for it, when a bunch of drunken shitheads come streaming out of the bar across the way, hooting raucously and yelling something about how the night is still young and they should take a trip out to Yoshiwara, and – _oh yeah,_ Gintoki thinks, as panic launches itself through his system, _we’re in fucking public_ and _until very recently this exact situation was three-quarters of the population of Edo’s fap fodder_. 

Shit. Shit shit shit. Shit. 

The only thing Gintoki can do is throw himself forward and try to become one with the wall – okay, one with the wall and the Hijikata he’s now squashing between himself and the wall. 

_Well, this is awkward._

True, he’s been in worse situations, he supposes – _way_ worse, even, than feeling the warmth of Hijikata’s cheek on the side of his neck, the way his throat bobs as he swallows, and the brush of his eyelashes as he blinks. He _definitely_ doesn’t take advantage of the situation to move his leg slightly, pressing his knee upwards between Hijikata’s thighs, or to smile at the way Hijikata’s fists curl in his yukata, or the sound he makes, which is half a gasp, half a splutter of seething outrage. Whatever – Hijikata should be grateful, given that Gin-san’s balls had taken days to recover from their unfortunate encounter with this dumb bastard’s knee the last time they met. Gin-san is being downright magnanimous in comparison.

“Shh, Hijikata-kun, they’ll see us,” he murmurs in a sing-song voice that’s exactly designed to get under his skin, and yeah, if Hijikata doesn’t kill him after this, he’s going to treat himself to a parfait every day for a week without any concern for his impending diabetes, because clearly he has become unkillable. 

“ _You fucking bastard_ – ” 

Oh well, he really doesn’t have any choice, does he, other than to shut Hijikata up by kissing him again, long and slow and with plenty of tongue and _maybe_ a hint of teeth, while the drunken tosspots behind them make their honking, shrieking way down the alley, and finally fuck off to parts unknown.

If this were some dumb movie, this would be where they’d pull away from each other breathlessly, no longer able to justify their sexy ruse now that the danger has passed. Luckily for Gintoki, the two of them were already making out before the idiots came out of the bar, so there’s no reason for them to stop.

... Well, they probably should stop at _some_ point, he supposes. Not right now, but in a minute or two. As much as he could go for a back-alley blowjob from the Demon Vice-Chief right now – he may or may not thrust a little against Hijikata at the thought – it would be a _spectacularly_ terrible idea. Even if Hijikata _did_ go for it, he’s pretty sure there’d be some serious regret involved with their first time being in a seedy alley somewhere, especially given how recent that whole ‘cameras recording everything you do in public’ thing was.

Anyway, that’s really more of a fifth date kind of idea. 

Right now, he has the Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi clawing at his back, trying to pull him closer even though the two of them are already pressed tight against each other, and yeah, they need to get somewhere private right the fuck now.

“Hey.” He disengages his mouth with difficulty and a great deal of regret, moving his kisses along Hijikata’s jaw and up towards his ear. “Just so you know. Kagura’s at Soyo’s place for the weekend. Do you wanna...?”

He finds himself holding his breath; despite his attempts to bleach the whole thing from his mind, he can’t fully forget what happened the last time he drunkenly asked Hijikata back to his place. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he gets rejected this time.

Hijikata’s breath hitches. “What the hell do you think?”

... Oh, well, that’s nice and clear at least. 

He manages to – eventually – disentangle himself, taking a step back to examine Hijikata, and... yeeeeeaah, he’s not gonna pass for anything other than a guy who was about one second away from desperately dry-humping someone in an alley. He’d laugh, but he knows he doesn’t look any better. The only way they’re going to get back to his place is by keeping to the shadows and pretending that they’re too shitfaced to walk without leaning against each other. That should be enough to explain away the rumpled clothes and disguise any hard-ons that may be attempting to make themselves known to the wider populace.

Well, this certainly wasn’t where he’d envisioned this day going when he’d been sitting around eating dango with Sougo – _fuck, was that only this afternoon?_ – and all this hasn’t really sunk in yet, though he’s sure it will at some point. Probably while the two of them are mid-fuck, and –

Okay, _now_ it’s starting to sink in. Gin-san’s going to get laid by the object of his incredibly detailed and persistent fantasies tonight – well, unless he does something spectacularly stupid. He’s actually feeling motivated to _not_ do something stupid for once in his life. He really, really does not want to fuck this up. 

They stagger along in the dark, arms slung around waists and across shoulders. As far as anyone else is concerned, they’re merely men who are supporting each other as wounded comrades in the battle against sobriety. Men who are clinging on tight to each other, one’s head resting upon the other’s shoulder, their hands grabbing at each other’s clothes for purchase –

_Shit._

He pulls the offending hand back with no small amount of regret and seeks distraction for both of them elsewhere.

“I can’t believe how easy you are, Hijikata-kun – if I’d known I could get you into bed by giving you a Tomoe-chan doll, I would’ve done it years ago.”

_Yeah, that’ll do it._

Hijikata launches into a stream of obscenities and threats, and Gintoki can’t help but grin stupidly. This is, apparently, the idiot he’s been wanting for years, and _apparently_ he was so dumb that everyone else in Edo noticed before he did. Everyone except the idiot, that is.

He starts laughing – and then he’s laughing so hard that he’s wheezing, and his sides start hurting. Hijikata’s staring at him... but then he’s laughing too, and the two of them nearly trip over each other’s feet as they stumble along.

“God, we’re both so fucking stupid,” Hijikata says, and there’s nothing that he can say in response, because it’s completely and utterly true. They’re both really, really stupid.

It’s like the air has been cleared – he’s still horny as fuck, of course, but the desperation has lifted. They’re back to the bickering and the laughter and the insults, but now – hopefully – with the added bonus of getting each other off. He thinks that they could wake up tomorrow morning without it being _too_ awkward.

In the companionable silence, a thought occurs to him.

“Hey. You don’t happen to have any of those videos saved, by any chance?”

He glances over. Hijikata looks embarrassed, but there’s nothing new about that – he _is_ a sour-faced prude after all, and he’s going to have to get on board with a lot more fifth date-type activities before Gintoki revises his opinion on that – but he coughs a little and shakes his head. “Nah, they all disappeared when the site went down.”

“Oh.” Gintoki knew it was coming – if there’s anyone in Edo who’s even worse with newfangled technology than he is, it’s Hijikata – but he’s still disappointed. “Damn.”

“It’s the strangest thing, though.”

Hijikata trails off, and Gintoki glances over at him. There’s a look in his eye that makes Gintoki think that he’s dealing specifically with the Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi right now.

“Yamazaki had some of the DVDs, but they disappeared from the Shinsengumi evidence locker before the Bakufu could confiscate them.” Hijikata’s gaze is fixed firmly on the footpath ahead of him. “Who knows where they are right now?”

_Who, indeed?_

Gintoki’s grinning like an idiot for the second time in as many minutes. _Hijikata, you sly bastard. Maybe there’s hope for you yet._

“Well. That’s a shame.” He clears his throat. “I don’t even want to know why Yamazaki was watching them.”

Hijikata snorts. “Would you believe that he was doing it under my orders?”

“... Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

“Bit late for that.”

There’s no bite to the words; if anything, the arm around his waist tightens. Swallowing, Gintoki has the secret, private, never-to-be-shared-with-Hijikata-and-barely-even-admitted-to-himself thought that maybe, just maybe, the last three weeks of DVDs, Sougo’s bullshit, Shinpachi’s judgement, sleep deprivation in internet teahouses, narrowly avoided penile gangrene and literally everything else may, possibly, have been worth it. 

He closes his eyes for a moment as a cool breeze plays through his hair, and he smiles. Tonight has been a really, really good night... and it’s not even over.

He wonders if the kitchen bench is clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END!!! 
> 
> Thanks again to all of you!
> 
> And very special thanks to our amazing beta rabbit_habits, who helped us out so much -- needless to say, any mistakes are ours alone :)
> 
>  **Edit:** This story now has an (E-rated) sequel, which follows up on the rest of the evening!: [When Life Gives You a Sequel with a Higher Rating Make Sure You Don't Screw It Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19186567/chapters/45608467).


End file.
